Spider's Web

by Mike Omer

  The detectives approached the counter.

  “Excuse me,” Mitchell said to one of the cashiers. “Can you tell me who Debbie is?”

  “I’m sorry, but there’s a line,” An overweight woman clutching the hand of a toddler told him in a shocked and offended tone. “I was clearly here before you.”

  Mitchell flipped his badge quickly hoping this would calm her down.

  “Oh!” the woman said, shaking her head in indignation. “So this is what we’ve come to? Can the police just cut the line because they have a badge and a gun?”

  “We’re here on official business, ma’am,” Mitchell said, his eyes following her quivering cheeks in fascination.

  “I am also on official business,” the woman said loudly, looking around her, clearly expecting the support of the other customers in the line. They, in turn, looked the other way. “There is a line!” Lines were obviously a big deal to her.

  “I’m Debbie,” interrupted one of the cashiers. She was a young girl, nineteen or twenty. She had deep brown skin and dark, alert eyes. She was the only one of the three cashiers who didn’t look as if the job had completely sucked out her soul and left an empty, living husk.

  “I’m Detective Mitchell Lonnie, and this is my partner, Detective Jacob Cooper,” Mitchell said. “We need to ask you a few questions.”

  “What about?” she asked, her eyes shifting left and right. She seemed scared, but people often did when they talked to the cops.

  “It’s better if we talk about it sitting down,” Mitchell said.

  “Well, I can’t right now, it’s really busy,” she said. “But I have a break at two thirty, if that’s okay.”

  “It’s an important matter,” Mitchell said. “We really need to talk right now.”

  “Hang on,” she said. She called the manager, a thin man whose facial expression was that of constant hysteria. There was a short whispered discussion, and finally she turned toward Mitchell and said, “It’s really the busiest time of day. I can take a break at a quarter to one. Would that be okay?” Her eyes were begging him, and Mitchell had a feeling that her job was on the line. He sighed and nodded, and she breathed in relief.

  “Would you like to order anything while you wait?” she asked.

  They had been awake since four a.m. They were starving. Usually Mitchell wouldn’t have been caught dead eating in a place like this, but now he found himself ordering the Paradisiacal Poultry meal. Jacob ordered a Peppery Perfect Potato and a small Pineapple Pork in barbecue sauce. The woman from the line moaned noisily as they placed their orders, and Mitchell smiled apologetically at her.

  Their meals arrived quickly, which was the only thing that could be mentioned in their favor. The food was awful. Oil invaded everywhere, making Mitchell feel as if his tongue and palate were victims of the BP Gulf spill. Soon, he thought, video clips of the insides of his mouth would be shown on TV, seagulls and fish covered in barbecue sauce dying between his teeth. He looked around the restaurant in amazement, searching for the tortured eyes of the customers around him, but they were all happy with their food, eating with gusto as if they had been served the most exquisite French cuisine. He turned to Jacob, who was eating a morsel of pineapple pork. Jacob clearly looked as if he was chewing death.

  “How is this place so successful?” Mitchell asked.

  “Maybe it’s an acquired taste,” Jacob suggested, swallowing hard.

  “Why would anyone try to acquire it?” Mitchell asked, but Jacob had no answer.

  By the time Debbie joined them at their table, they had both managed to eat half their meals, and left the other half untouched. Mitchell’s appetite was gone, and he wasn’t sure it would ever return.

  Debbie looked at their trays. “Didn’t like the food?” she asked.

  “It’s ghastly,” Mitchell said, his usual politeness gone in the face of this culinary atrocity.

  “Yeah.” Debbie nodded. “It is.”

  “Miss, could you please tell us how you know Kendele Byers?” Jacob asked.

  “She’s my friend,” Debbie said, her eyes widening. “She used to work here. Is she okay?”

  “When was the last time you saw Kendele?” Mitchell asked.

  “About a month ago,” Debbie said. “We went out. Then she stopped answering my texts and calls. Please, Detective, where is she? What happened to her?”

  “I’m afraid Kendele is dead,” Mitchell said softly.

  “Oh,” Debbie said weakly, slumping in her chair. Her eyes filled with tears, and one spilled over and trickled slowly along her cheek. She paid it no mind, turning to stare out of one of the windows.

  “Was it one of her… customers?” she finally asked.

  “We don’t know,” Mitchell said.

  “She said that some of them were kind of creepy.”

  “Did she mention any names?” he asked. “Anyone in particular?”

  “Nah.” Debbie sniffed, and turned to look at Mitchell. “She didn’t like to talk about it.”

  “But she did tell you about… her business.” Mitchell said.

  “Yeah. I mean, she told me all about it when she quit this place.”

  “And she never mentioned anyone specific who bothered her?” he pressed. “Someone she was worried about?”

  “No, she just said there were one or two creepy guys, and that she wasn’t selling them anything anymore.”

  “Debbie,” Jacob said. “Did Kendele have a relationship? Did she go out with anyone?”

  “No.”

  “Are you sure?” he said.

  “Yeah, I’m sure. It was her number one complaint. That guys always wanted to fuck her, but no one wanted to stay the night.”

  “What guys?”

  “Just random guys,” Debbie shrugged and wiped her eyes. “You know how she looked.”

  “No,” Mitchell said, “Not really.”

  Debbie blinked. “Then how do you know—”

  “We don’t really know how she looked when she was alive,” Mitchell explained delicately.

  Debbie pulled her phone from her pocket, fiddled with it, and showed the screen to the detectives. It was a selfie, taken by Debbie, of herself hugging another girl in a place that looked like a pub. The girl had long, smooth red hair, and a beautiful face. She smiled happily at the camera, exposing small, perfect white teeth.

  “You can’t see her body here but, trust me, it was gorgeous,” Debbie said. “Guys were falling over each other trying to flirt with her. I never bought my own drink when I was with her, I can tell you that.”

  “So did she see a lot of men?” Jacob asked.

  “Detective, are you trying to ask me if she fucked a lot of guys?” Debbie asked, turning to look at him.

  “I meant what I said,” Jacob said, unwavering.

  “Fine, whatever. Nah, as far as I know only one or two. And like I said, they never stayed around afterward.”

  “Do you happen to know why her brother thought she lived in San Francisco?” Mitchell asked.

  “Sure,” Debbie said. “She didn’t want him to tell their asshole of a father where she lived.”

  Mitchell nodded, waiting.

  “Look, Kendele’s dad beat her, okay? She was seriously abused as a kid. Eventually she ran away. Found a place to stay, with some friends. Then her dad went looking for her. Told her brother that he wanted Kendele to come back home. That he had seen the error of his ways, blah blah blah, he would never lay a hand on her again. So her idiot brother told him where she was staying, and what do you know, her dad barged in and beat her to a pulp. She ran away again, ended up here. But she didn’t tell her brother where she was really staying because she didn’t trust him anymore.” She leaned back, folded her arms. “Now that she’s dead, you guys finally take an interest.”

  “You think her father killed her?” Mitchell asked.

  “How the hell should I know? All I can tell you is that the list of nice people that Kendele knew was really short.”

&nb
sp; “Do you know if Kendele used to jog regularly?” Jacob asked.

  “Sure. Four times a week, at five in the morning, like clockwork. She loved running.”

  “Why so early?” Jacob asked.

  “She liked running while the city was still sleeping,” Debbie said. “She said that everything was beautiful when there weren’t people in it.”

  “Did she always jog in the same place?”

  “I think so. She jogged in a park. Not sure where.”

  “I see.” Jacob nodded.

  She stood up. “Gotta go back to work. Those chickens aren’t going to serve themselves,” she said.

  Jacob handed her a card. “If you think of anything, let us know,” he said.

  She nodded and walked away.

  The sun was beginning to set as Mitchell pulled the black Dodge Charger in and parked by Buttermere Park. He and Jacob got out and started walking down the trail.

  They had spent a few frustrating hours running up against dead ends. Jacob had talked to Kendele’s parents on the phone. They’d been notified by Leon about their daughter’s death. They were quite cooperative until the matter of abuse came up. Then they promptly hung up the phone, after telling Jacob he could talk to their lawyer if he needed anything else.

  Meanwhile, Mitchell had started calling the men on Kendele’s client list, Or at least the ones where he managed to find a phone number to match their address. There were a lot of calls with claims of total ignorance, offended threats, and hysterical denials. People hung up on him a lot as well. Only a few managed to supply an alibi for the relevant dates. That suspect list was not getting slimmer anytime soon.

  Eventually Jacob suggested they take a break, drive by the crime scene, and look around a bit. Mitchell suspected Jacob simply wanted a walk in the park, but seeing as his own ear was beginning to hurt, he wasn’t about to argue with his partner.

  As they got closer to the patch of trees where Kendele Byers had been found, Mitchell found himself imagining that morning. Kendele running down that very trail, the park completely silent, just the way she loved it. According to Matt, she had been wearing black running shorts and a purple sports bra.

  She probably ran fast, to overcome the chilliness of the early morning. And then… what? Had she seen someone down the trail? Had he been waiting for her? Perhaps a familiar face? Or did he hide behind a tree and grab her when she was close enough? Had she struggled?

  They reached the trees, and Jacob went over to the grave where Kendele had been buried. Mitchell stared at the pond, and a strange feeling of déjà vu struck him. He had been here many times before, but… There was something else about that pond. A thought or a memory was trying to emerge… As he tried to force it out, it dissipated; it left him frustrated, like he had been about to say something and then forgot what it was.

  The water rippled in the slight afternoon wind, the surface shimmering under the setting sun’s rays of light. How had the water looked that day? Mitchell tried to picture it: the man dragging Kendele to the pond, plunging her head beneath the surface. Why? Why do it like that? It seemed so unnecessarily complicated.

  He walked over to Jacob.

  “Doesn’t this murder feel weird?” he said.

  Jacob nodded.

  “Why here?” Mitchell said. “Why like this? Why not strangle her, or stab her, or shoot her?”

  “He planned this carefully,” Jacob said.

  “How do you know?”

  “He knew her. Knew she ran here regularly early in the morning. He was stalking her,” Jacob said. He pointed at the grave. “He didn’t dig this entire grave after he killed her. If he had, it would have taken too long, people would have started walking around. Someone would have seen him. No. He got here during the night, dug up the grave and waited. She showed up, just like she always did, just like he knew she would. He grabbed her when she was close enough, drowned her in the pond, then threw her into the grave and covered her up.”

  “Then why drown her?”

  Jacob shook his head. “It was intentional. It was the way he planned it. It was important.”

  “Why?”

  Jacob looked at him. “How the hell should I know? I don’t have all the answers.”

  They both became quiet. This was worrying. It was all beginning to sound very obsessive, and very insane.

  “Would her father do something like that, if he found out where she lived?”

  Jacob thought about it. “I don’t know,” he said. “Doesn’t sound likely. The deranged used-underpants customer sounds like the more likely scenario.”

  “Then we need to get cracking on that list.”

  “Yeah.”

  The two detectives stood above the grave for a minute more, then turned and walked back to the car.

  Mitchell felt drained as he walked into his apartment. The entire day felt like one big failure. What had they managed to learn? That a paltry number of their suspects had alibis? That Kendele had been abused by her father? That she jogged regularly? Somehow all those little facts didn’t feel as if they were about to amount to anything.

  “Pauline?” he called.

  “In here,” she said from the bedroom.

  He walked over, stopped in the doorway.

  She lay on her stomach on the bed, staring at her laptop screen. She was watching an episode of Shameless, a series which she had repeatedly tried to convince him to see with her, to no avail. She wore a black tank top with spaghetti straps, and slightly translucent white shorts. She was barefoot, and her feet kept swinging up and down as she stared intently at the screen. Her long brown hair was tied back in a ponytail, as it always was. Her bare upper back, tawny beige and smooth, beckoned to him. He felt as if the entire day’s weight slowly dissipated from his shoulders. Gently he got on the bed, lying on top of her, hugging her from behind.

  “You’re squashing me,” she complained, breathless, and elbowed him.

  He rolled away, laughing. “How was your day?” he asked.

  “Fine,” she said distractedly. “A customer at the clinic flirted with me today.”

  “Yeah? Did you tell him you were taken?”

  “Don’t be silly. I wanted to hear what he had to offer first.”

  “Ah,” Mitchell said, his fingertips caressing the top of her back gently. “And what did he have?”

  “A root canal.”

  “Sounds like a fantastic catch.”

  Pauline worked as a dental assistant. Mitchell constantly tried to convince her to try and do something better with her life. He was convinced she could be so much more. She often got angry at his attempts. There was nothing wrong with being a dental assistant, she always said.

  “And then,” she said, “when I rode the bus home, it had a flat tire and I had to wait for the next one, and ride it standing up, stuffed with all the other bus refugees like a can of sardines.”

  “The struggle is real,” Mitchell said.

  She glanced at him. “Are you mocking my suffering?”

  “No, not at all.”

  “How was your day?”

  “I interviewed about twenty people who like to sniff underpants today,” Mitchell said.

  “Really?” This made her pause the video. She rolled to her side, smiling at him. He loved her smile.

  “Yeah.”

  “And what did you find?”

  “I found that most people do not like it when you ask them about their underpants-sniffing habits.”

  She grinned at him. He smiled back. Her tank top was a bit crooked, exposing the top curve of her breast. He shifted closer, wrapping his arm around her, and pulled her toward him.

  “Are you getting turned on by this panty-sniffing conversation?” she whispered.

  “No,” he said. “I’m getting turned on by being near you.”

  She kissed him, her hand sliding on his stomach, and Mitchell rolled to his back, pulling her on top of him.

  Chapter Six

  He stood in a small cleari
ng in Buttermere Park’s grove. The police had found the body of Kendele Byers nearby, just a week before. That was not part of the plan, though he wasn’t particularly disturbed by it. He had been careful.

  He was looking at the ground, where just four months before he had scattered hundreds of yellow flower seeds. He was pleasantly surprised by the results. There were dozens of flowers growing all over the ground, dotting the clearing. He did it in memory of her. She had loved the color yellow, wore yellow shirts and dresses almost every day.

  He had come to the clearing to think of a very special date. Over thirty years had passed since that occasion, and it was still the most vivid memory in his mind. He smiled as he thought of it, looking at the blossoms around him. It was a warm and sunny day, and the park teemed with people: families spending time together; couples in love walking on the paved paths, holding hands; dog walkers marching briskly, their pets padding along with their tongues lolling. And one man, traveling down memory lane. Thinking of Kendele Byers, thinking of a day long ago, thinking of another beautiful girl, and the invisible thread that tied them together.

  He had been dormant for so long before his awakening. Years lost to routine, a dull job, tepid encounters with other people, a long stretch of colorless days and dreamless nights. He almost felt sorry for the people in the park, leading the same drab lives, doomed to waste their short lifespans on nothing.

  They were too blind to see the truth. There was more to life than that. There were pure moments of thrill and joy. One just had to find them. Kendele had understood. Just before she’d died, she had understood; he could feel it.

  He felt the growing anticipation inside him. Soon, it would be time once again. He could almost imagine the moment of impact as his next victim would die. His heart thumped a bit faster as he pictured it happening, late at night, not far from her home.

  It was going to be a violent death.

  Anticipation. There was almost nothing better.