Suddenly, she found herself asking why she ever wanted to join them again. She leaned forward with her tiptoes on the precipice of disaster, flirting with the idea of—
“Vivian?”
She lurched back. Camilla soundlessly swept onto the balcony.
“What?”
“I need to talk to you about what I saw.” Vivian winced. Camilla had returned to the sewer basement to find her shaking uncontrollably, staring at the twisted remains of Natalie. The last few hours elapsed in a blur as Vivian tried in vain to repress the shock.
“There’s nothing more to say.”
“Yes, there is! Is that what happens to these missing women? They’re humiliated, tortured, and killed?” The panic in her voice frightened Vivian. “When were you going to tell me?”
Vivian gazed numbly into the horizon.
“I don’t know what I’m doing anymore,” she whispered.
“Neither do I! I feel like I’m walking blindly into hell. You should have told me!”
“Told you what? That these missing women are strung up from the ceiling and drowned in filth? Would you still have agreed to help me?” Camilla was unpromisingly quiet. “You’ll still help me, won’t you?”
“Yes, yes, I will,” she mumbled, trying to convince herself as much as Vivian. “I’ll help. I’m just overwhelmed to learn the truth. It’s nothing like I imagined the police were concealing.”
“Promise you won’t tell anyone. If you start leaking details, Nikolai will suspect me of talking. Try to hold it in until the investigation is closed, okay?”
She could see the misgivings swirling in Camilla’s eyes.
“But I can’t!” she spouted, throwing her hands up in the air. “The public deserves to know what’s lurking in their community! And the families deserve to know what’s happening to their daughters!”
“No!” Vivian seized her by the shoulders, desperate to make her see the truth. “Don’t do this! You’ll ruin the investigation, and I’ll be hauled off to prison! I don’t belong in a cell with convicted killers and monsters! Don’t you understand?!”
“Then what’s your solution? Wait for the next body to turn up?”
Vivian gritted her teeth.
“No one else is going to die. I won’t allow it.”
“You can’t promise that, Vivian! You have to go public with this information before someone else is murdered!”
“Listen to me! I’m not letting you leave until you promise. Don’t tell anyone.”
Camilla glanced at the edge of the balcony as she felt Vivian’s grip tighten.
What desperate thoughts may be taking shape in Red Widow’s already unstable mind? She was a terrified girl dangling to her freedom, backed into a corner by a cunning homicide detective. Camilla couldn’t afford to provoke one as dangerous as her.
“Okay…I promise.” Vivian released her, reluctant to place any weight in her words. Camilla shuffled away, looking defeated. “But if you find another body, I can’t promise my silence. Good night, Vivian. I’ll lock the door when I leave.”
Vivian stood alone on the balcony once more. She surveyed Prague in reverie, tossed about by so many conflicting emotions. She had managed to drag another unfortunate soul into this madness—the same way Nikolai had trapped her. How would Camilla fare against the things to come? Would she crumble when she devours the totality of this killer’s crimes?
Vivian heard the doors open below and she watched Camilla weave through the gnarled gardens. She faded into the rosy neon night as soon as she cleared the gates.
* * *
Her shadow seemed to consume him all the way to the front desk.
Nikolai glanced over his shoulder into Tatiana’s stony eyes. She perfectly embodied the reason why he worked in isolation. He felt smothered by the notion of a partner, especially one as obtrusive at her. There was nothing symbiotic about their relationship.
If anything, she would hamper his efforts to find the killer.
“Detective,” the receptionist noted. “I was just about to give you a ring.”
Nikolai couldn’t mask the greedy anticipation swimming behind his eyes. A call from the medical examiner’s office could either spell disaster or be a boon to his investigation.
“Another body?”
“Jezebel has something she would like to show you in the autopsy room. She needs you down there immediately.”
Nikolai’s heart skipped several beats as a pair of automatic doors growled open. He barely remembered uttering the words “thank you” before the receptionist’s window slid shut.
Tatiana eagerly stood by the entrance. The pearlescent corridors twisted and turned at jarring intervals, but Nikolai’s feet knew precisely when to turn. It was a mesmerizing journey he had traced many times throughout his career, more times than any sane human should have to endure. He nearly bound into the morgue at the thought of the revelations awaiting him.
His heels ground to a halt when he saw the nude, bloated body lying on the autopsy table. Her clothes had been snipped away to reveal the dark complexion that sets in after hours of decomposition. Her discarded laundry lay on the linoleum floor next to the drain for bodily fluids.
“He certainly is fond of controlled environments,” Jezebel said, studying the scalpel in her grasp. Tatiana thrust a pair of latex gloves into Nikolai’s hands and marched defiantly into the room. “He puts an obscene amount of preparation into elaborate, cruel devices. These are not the inventions of a sane man.”
Jezebel lifted her eyes to marvel at the exotic-looking woman who dared intrude on her realm.
“Tatiana will be joining us today,” Nikolai explained.
“You thought I could use the audience? How thoughtful, Nikolai.” Her morbid humor did not rest well with Tatiana, who cringed.
“I assume she wasn’t this big when she was alive?” she asked, studying the foul-smelling corpse.
“Not even close. Natalie’s medical records indicate she weighed approximately a hundred and twenty pounds. Furthermore, she was physically active in gymnastics and dancing. She even won a few first-place medals. As you can imagine, having sewage pipes rigged to her digestive tract drastically changed that. Sewage accumulated in her esophageal tract, stomach, and lower GI. She died of asphyxiation.”
Morbid films of Natalie’s lungs hovered in the dark, framing Jezebel’s figure like seraphim wings.
A seraphim of death, Nikolai mentally noted.
Sometimes he wondered if he would find himself under her scalpel one day, all his secrets laid bare one slice at a time. It was a cruel notion that taunted him every time he lay down at night, and he could almost feel the chill of the autopsy table as he rested his cheek against the pillow. As much as he resented the truth, his secret phobia of death handicapped his career.
His fear of what awaited him beyond death laughed in his face every time the media bombarded him with sensational police killings. Even the most cautious and coolheaded cop could be gunned down in a sick twist of fate.
“What is that?” Nikolai asked, jabbing an anomaly on Natalie’s skull MRI. It resembled a mesh of wire lodged in her cranium.
“Angiostrongylus cantonesis.”
“What?”
“Rat lungworm.” Nikolai wanted to gag. “The killer is branching out of his comfort zone. This is the first murder to take place outside of an abandoned apartment. All of the victims have been selected from a five-mile radius. That may soon change.”
Leaking fluids told Tatiana that Natalie’s eyes and ears were in the grips of a virulent infection. Large blisters mottled her skin from gases inhabiting the raw tissue.
Tatiana craned over Natalie’s face. The sores in her cheeks had turned a sweltering red from exposure to sewage water. The gleam of her green irises was clouded under the milky layer that so often accompanies death when tears cease production. Something writhed under the cornea. She jerked back when she saw the parasite’s tail in the colorless void.
“So whe
re is it?” Nikolai asked. “The needle mark.”
Jezebel rotated the left hand to reveal the perverse stigmata.
“The killer also wrapped barbed wire around her wrists and inserted a dental gag to force her jaws open.” Nikolai gritted his teeth as he bit back the toxic slew of profanity on the tip of his tongue.
“We’ve seen the violence escalate erratically with every successive murder,” he spat. “What are the chances he’s under the influence of this mystery drug? Is he even in control of himself or is he highly cunning and intelligent?”
“His actions certainly beg the question, don’t they?”
“There is no other explanation for this cruelty. I truly don’t want to believe someone can consciously do this to another person.”
“I’m afraid you’ll have to ask him for yourself. I don’t know if he is sane or not. Upon further review of the substance in Krista’s blood, this drug has a higher toxicity level than I previously thought. In fact, it rivals the potency of cocaine.”
Nikolai rocked back on his heels. A substance stronger than cocaine.
“What are you babbling about?” Tatiana demanded.
“This drug is a tropane alkaloid, just like cocaine. Even the smallest dose is extremely concentrated in the blood. Chemical damage is rampant throughout the cardiovascular system and the heart. The blood samples will require further analysis before I can determine precisely what’s happening at a cellular level.”
“Did you collect a brain biopsy?”
“As a matter of fact, I did. You can thank me for collecting one before you and Nikolai arrived. Trust me, not everyone can endure the sight of someone’s skull being sawed open.”
With that warning, Jezebel’s diamond-like scalpel hovered above Natalie’s distended stomach. Nikolai tensed. He could imagine the swarm of parasites that would surge forth like hydras when the sterilized blade swept through the subcutaneous layers of fat and muscle.
“Wait,” Jezebel cried, suddenly lowering the scalpel. “Before we begin, I need to show you something.” Nikolai and Tatiana both relaxed.
“Is it more important than the autopsy?”
“More or less. Follow me.” Leaving the domain of the dead, Jezebel crossed the hall and scanned her card at the door. She briskly entered the chemicals lab host to post-mortem fluids.
“I took the liberty of collecting post-mortem blood and urine samples of Natalie before you arrived. I couldn’t wait for you and Tatiana to show up. This brings me to the other reason I called you down here…”
Nikolai glanced at a phlebotomist carrying a rack of blood tubes. Her grip did not look steady, and Nikolai certainly didn’t want to become acquainted with whatever diseases might be swimming inside. A centrifuge whirred in the distant corner, separating the red blood cells from plasma.
Jezebel opened a blood bank freezer and a tuft of mist hissed out. Once the coiling tendrils dissipated, Nikolai could see the collection of blood tubes inside.
“I isolated Krista’s DNA from her blood sample and examined the STR regions. I followed the same procedure with the blood used in the messages on the wall. The results are conclusive.” Jezebel rotated the chilled glass in her hand, watching the light gleam through the crimson veil. “The DNA profiles did not match. In fact, the blood doesn’t match Natalie either.”
Nikolai stared accusingly at the glass tube.
“I have a foreboding feeling this blood belongs to our killer,” Jezebel said, setting it down.
Nikolai couldn’t imagine a serial killer mutilating himself to write an ambiguous message on the wall. But in that moment, he was willing to consider any possibility.
“Run the blood against our offender index. I want to know immediately if you find any matches.”
The roiling freezer breezed shut.
“I’m already on it. We should have a match in less than seventy-two hours.”
* * *
Vivian looked solemnly at the notice posted on the dilapidated door.
Condemned, Dangerous and Unsafe, Keep Out
How strange that those foreboding words stood between Vivian and her past. One twist of the door would plunge her into the memories that cried out for acknowledgement at the tip of her imagination. She had returned to the outskirts the very next day, winding past boarded up shops to her childhood home.
The foundation sagged into the earth, and the windows gaped with teethed shards of glass. How she wished Camilla would accompany her into this broken home. Unfortunately, the newspaper called her away to investigate a church arson.
How ironic, Vivian thought. The fire that blistered through her house certainly fell under the definition of arson, except the culprits would never face prosecution for their crimes.
She pushed open the door without meeting even a fraction of resistance. It seemed to will itself open, ushering her inside a realm of infinite mysteries. Nostalgia slapped against her like a heavy tide, carrying her away to distant shores of younger days.
Beneath the ashes and residue, she recognized a place where she truly belonged. Home had always been anxiously waiting for her, separated by an ocean of time and change.
She sidled in front of the dining table that once hosted a plethora of steaming hot meals. Elegantly carved duck, fried rice, plates of steamed dumplings, pork heels dipped in a brown sauce, and soft-shelled turtle stewed with chicken, mushrooms, and wine. Her lips ached to bite into those succulent delights.
Now the napkins and silverware sat idle under a tide of ashes.
Her sigh sent a blizzard of dust rolling across the table cloth. Flames had charred much of the interior, but someone extinguished the fire before it could raze the entire neighborhood. She soaked in the sight of memoirs her family left during that ill night; framed photographs bleached with decay, a bookshelf cluttered with burnt pages, her grandmother’s vase stuffed with peacock feathers.
As she glided up the stairs, she lifted her eyes to a family portrait fused to the wall. Her father and mother smiled warmly at her from beyond the glass, sitting in the park with a much younger Vivian sandwiched between them. Where her beaming face should have been, she had been replaced by a black stain. Even her photographed likeness did not escape the fury of the flames. Glass chuckled beneath her heels as she ascended the steps and trespassed on broken memories.
Her bedroom lurked only twelve paces down the hall. Like a timid child approaching an animal, she treaded lightly across the rotting floorboards. At last, she crossed the threshold into a remnant of her past she wished didn’t hold sway over her.
Her room was no more than an ashen bloodstain sandwiched between the walls. Chalky residue coated the plaster and ceiling in thick webbing. For all impressions, Red Widow may have been born out of a mesh of chaos. The hollow air felt charged with anxiety so palpable that Vivian felt her lungs swelling shut. The speckled walls swam around here, peeling away in layers.
She felt tempted to lie down in her childhood bed among the debris and fall listlessly asleep. It took all of her resolve turn around and latch the door.
As she retreated down the stairs, she caught sight of something swaying above the front door. How could she not have noticed this before?
Her fingers brushed against the familiar Chinese charm suspended above the doorway. Her mother said she hung the ornament shortly after giving birth to Vivian. The gourd-shaped coin was inscribed with “fu” and “shou,” meaning happiness and longevity. Five bats surrounded the character “fu,” symbolizing the five blessings of longevity, wealth, health and composure, virtue, and the desire to die a natural death.
How many of those apply to me? Hopefully the last one.
She flipped the coin over to the reverse side.
“Kill,” she murmured. “Sha,” the Chinese character inscribed in the center of the coin, translated into “kill.” “God of Thunder, clear out and kill the ghosts and send down purity,” she continued, reading the inscription. “Behead the demons, expel the evils and keep us eterna
lly safe. Let this command from Lao Zi be executed quickly.”
Sometimes, Chinese gourds were associated with magical elixirs and healing. Vivian quickly tucked the charm into her shirt, shivering at the cold tingle of metal over her beating heart. Maybe it would shield her from the serial killer.
Now it was time to leave this cold remnant of the past behind, never to be unearthed again.
Sunlight spilled into the darkened hall as she pulled open the door. As she emerged onto the porch, a sigh deluged from her chest.
It was time to contemplate her next move on nature’s chessboard. Of course, she was just a meager pawn in Nikolai’s hand, but she could still draw out the killer. No doubt he was already lining up his pieces to take out the next unwary victim.
That unnerving prospect didn’t dissuade her. She always considered strategy as her strong suit, anticipating her adversary’s move and reacting before they even realized she was on the prowl. Of course, she had never faced an opponent of this caliber before.
She skidded to a stop past the houses. A slash of blazing orange cut through the fog.
“Not another one,” she breathed. It enthralled her from a distance, fluttering in the wind. She broke into a sprint, closing in on a lone house blanketed in mist. Just as she thought, another warning notice had been affixed to the door. How strange that it was the only house besides hers deemed unfit to exist.
Resting her hand on the door, she wondered what this Victorian fortress concealed. Perhaps it, too, had been raided by a reckless police force? There was no quelling her curiosity now as those teasing fantasies took shape. Biting her lip, she nudged open the door.
The kitchen was lifeless and gray, virtually humming with decay. Everything about this place felt… wrong and obscene. Just around the corner was a door tucked under the staircase.
She pried open the cellar, greeted by a void behind the door.
Red Widow (Vivian Xu, Book 1) Page 11