by Riley, R. Thomas; Zoot, Campbell; Chandler, Randy; Kauwe, Faith
“Oh, Hank,” her voice breaks. “Oh, Hank, please come home, right away.” I can hear the thickness of tears.
“Abbs, whats going on? Are you alright?”
“It’s Jason” she chokes out, “little Jason Ritchie. He’s dead.”
* * *
The yellow plastic police tape is fluttering like a banner when I get back to the neighborhood. Luckily, someone is just carting off Jason’s mom, who is hysterically crying, so that’s one less song and dance for me. I check in with the officer who first responded to the call. He looks shaken as he gives me the rundown.
“Parents didn’t hear anything out of the ordinary last night, no racket, nothing. Kid never came down for breakfast, so the mom went up to his room, found the door was locked, took her a bit to break the lock. She found the body and made the call. I gotta tell you, Rearden. It ain’t pretty.”
I nod. “I’ll be alright. I’ve seen it before.”
I have seen it before, but it’s never been quite this bad. Jason’s face is gone- or rather, it’s hanging in clean bloodless ribbons off the bones of his skull, like the shredded ends of a cheap paper hula skirt. This is a first. My shredder didn’t touch the faces of either of the previous vics. There’s no sign of a struggle, not a chair overturned or a lamp broken—which is a bit odd, the other crime scenes had all shown signs of considerable struggle. Although, how much struggle can a twelve year old boy really put up? And what kind of sick fuck does this to a kid anyway? And how does this connect with my other two vics? I see the first of the CSI team coming up the stairs to Jason’s room and I clear out of the way. Not that they’ll find anything up here. My sick fuck is way too smart to leave any trace evidence behind. My cell rings. It’s Langley.
“Hank, listen. I ran Fred Demille’s DNA. Other than traffic tickets, he’s got one prior we’re interested in. He was in a minor fender bender and checked himself into an ER a few years ago. He had some kind of psychotic episode while there and attacked an orderly. He was transferred to the Psych ward and kept under surveillance for a week before being released. I pulled the hospital’s Psych evaluation file on him and the supervising psychiatrist wrote that she felt that Demille was possibly sociopathic and even homicidal. Of course, county hospital, no one followed up and he’s never been convicted or even charged with another crime.”
“Doesn’t mean he didn’t commit one,” I say. “We don’t catch everyone. This changes things, Langley. If Demille was a criminal, we could be looking at some sort of revenge killing from one of his past victims. You need to run the other vic’s DNA, too—the schoolteacher, what’s his name?”
“Bill Rawson. You got it, Hank. How’re things at the kid’s place?”
“Not pretty.” Which just reminds me that this whole theory is shit, even if it does turn out that the schoolteacher has some sordid past, there’s no way Jason Ritchie was a criminal. A rude little shit, maybe, but not a criminal. Fuck. I need another cigarette.
I light up downstairs, away from the other cops and the snapping of the lab geek’s cameras. I take a few paces away from the house, being careful to ash on the sidewalk. Not that Mrs. Ritchie is gonna care about ash on her lawn, seeing as how her kid just got sliced up. I see the Ritchie’s immediate next door neighbor, old Miss Miu, the quintessential spinster cat lady sitting on her front porch, one of her cats on her lap. I doubt she heard or saw anything, but it’s worth a shot. I stub out my cigarette.
“Morning, Miss Miu. Although,” I follow belatedly “guess there isn’t much good about it, is there?”
Another feline twines itself around my feet and I give it a disinterested pat. God knows how many damn cats the old bat has. At least she keeps them all in good health and the house doesn’t smell.
“Well, we’ve got beautiful weather today, Detective,” she says in her diminutive little voice which barely escapes a squeak. “Nothing to complain about there.”
“I just meant about the Ritchie’s boy, Jason. You know, the, uh, senseless tragedy next door.” I’m a real charmer when it comes to talking about death, let me tell you. Yeah, so sorry, Ma’am, about your kid getting slashed to death. Now if you’ll just quit crying and let me do my job so I can find the fucker that did it… you get the picture.
“Oh yes, very sad, that,” Miss Miu says, nodding gravely. “I suppose you’ll have your hands full around here, eh, Detective?”
“Right. And about that, you didn’t happen to hear or see anything out of the ordinary last night, did you?”
She shakes her head sadly. “Not a whimper. I wish I could be more help”.
I shrug. “You just hang tight, Miss Miu. Make sure you’re locking all your doors at night. Hate to have to say that to you, in this neighborhood.”
She gives me a small, wrinkled smile. “Oh, I’m not afraid, Hank. When you’ve been around as long as I have, you don’t get scared of much.”
“That’s the spirit.”
“And besides,” she continues on, conversationally, “Jason wasn’t a very nice boy anyway.”
I frown. “What do you mean?”
“Well he burned my little Cosette.” She shuffles the cat on her lap around, shows me the fluffy little thing’s tail, or rather, lack of a tail. “He tied a firecracker to her tail. Nearly burnt my poor girl to death. He thought I didn’t see, but I did. I did see.”
“I’m real sorry about that, Miss Miu. I wish you would’ve told me, cruelty to animals is something I don’t take lightly.” My gut is doing somersaults. Maybe I did put too much hot sauce on my breakfast burrito.
“Well, it’s no matter, now,” she says sadly, “and I took care of Cosette. But his poor mother must be a wreck.” I’ve got no response for that and no desire to start a conversation about how sad Mrs. Ritchie is. I bid the cat lady goodbye and head back to the crime scene.
***
I meet up with Langley in the afternoon and he hands over the printout from the criminal database on our other vic, Bill Rawson. My gut thrashes triumphantly. Rawson, a middle school teacher, had a student claim he molested her a few years ago but the charges were dropped without any prosecution and her family moved her out of state the next month. But we all know where there’s smoke, there’s fire. I’ve finally found a connection between the vics. I put Jason Ritchie out of my mind for the moment. Both the murdered men were unsavory assholes. I could be looking at some fucked up vigilante shit. I decide to head back over to Rawson’s place, see if this new development changes the way I look at the crime scene—maybe go through Rawson’s contacts, see if I can find a common tie between the two men.
***
Flipping through his black book has little results. I can’t find a match to any of the contacts listed in Fred Demille’s phone. I try a different avenue of thought—try to think like the perp. If the men were killed out of revenge, then the perp would have to know what they’d done. Fuck, I don’t even know what they’ve done. Maybe that’s where I need to start. Comb through the Unsolved’s for the last few months, see if any of those match these profiles. Maybe if I can find their victims, that will lead me to someone with motive and opportunity.
Langley sticks his head through the door. “Hank, you know anything about a cat?”
For a second I think of Lupe and Bonita the Abyssinian, but then I realize that’s the wrong crime scene, Bonita’s over at Demille’s. I shake my head.
“Kid here says Rawson had a cat, says she’s been feeding it.”
A frizzy haired little blond pokes her head around Langley’s leg.
“I gotta picture of him here,” she says. “My mom said I could keep him and I’ve been feeding him and stuff but he hasn’t been around the last couple days.”
I take the photo out of her hand. Big white cat. I shake my head
“Sorry, kiddo. We haven’t seen a cat around here. He’s probably off hunting mice or something. I’m sure he’ll be back.” I’m lying. Cat probably got hit by a car or lost in a canyon.
Her lip trembles. “I sure hop
e so. He’s real pretty and real nice. And he’s got really cool eyes. One is blue and the other is green.”
I nod distractedly and give her a disinterested pat on the head. I’m already thinking about my plan of attack when I get back to the station.
Tackling the recent Missing Persons records at the station is a start. Langley agrees it’s a long shot but it’s something—and anything is better than bashing our heads in frustration. With no new leads from Rawson’s apartment, we spend the rest of the afternoon trying to find links in any Missing Persons or recent unsolved crimes. At 6:00, I throw in the towel, wondering what Abby’s making for dinner and what she’s wearing. Or not wearing.
***
The house smells great when I get in. Abby is in the kitchen, humming to herself and sautéing garlic.
“I’m glad you’re home early, babe,” she says. “I picked up Mrs. Tsuji’s little spaniel from the vet this afternoon and I haven’t had a chance to take him back to her, yet. Could you take him back before it gets dark?”
I grab a beer from the fridge. “What’s wrong with the dog?”
“I guess she found a cut on his paw this morning. Looked like he caught it in a wire fence or stepped on a nail or something. Poor little guy, he was limping around and you know Mrs. Tsuji doesn’t drive much so I took him to the vet for her.”
My gut curdles again, reminding me of something I should remember, but I tell myself it’s just excited about the prospect of dinner. I give Abby a quick kiss on her upturned face, grab the dog’s carrier and tell her I’ll be right back.
***
Mrs. Tsuji’s house is about two blocks away and I’m enjoying the quiet of the dusk and the fact that the spaniel is not yapping or yelping in his bag. I see the yellow flutter of the crime scene tape at the Ritchie’s house but their cars are gone. I don’t blame them. I wouldn’t want to spend the night in that house. I see a flutter of movement in the hedges of the house next door as a beautiful gold and cream cat jumps onto the porch. I pause, the dog has started moving around in his bag and my gut is flipping around like a goddamn Chinese acrobat. The cat looks at me serenely, no mistaking, it’s definitely an Abyssinian. And then from under the rocker on the chair, I see another cat stretch itself out long and lean before jumping on the porch railing—a big white cat. He stares me down and my gut stops twirling, stops shuddering, stops everything. My breath comes real hard and fast and then it doesn’t come at all. The cat has one green eye and one blue eye. I walk up the stairs to the porch. My mind isn’t even trying to make anything make sense. I feel like I’m moving through water, or a dream. I set the dog’s carrier on the porch and ring the doorbell.
“Well hello, Detective,” Miss Miu says. She doesn’t look at all surprised to see me. And her voice doesn’t sound quite as squeaky as it normally does. In fact, it sounds like it’s dropped an octave, maybe even two.
“I need to ask you a few questions,” I say. She smiles at me, and I realize the crow’s feet that wrinkled her eyes earlier today are gone.
“Well, won’t you come in, my dear?” She holds the door open for me and the cats slither in around my ankles.
Inside, there are painted silk tapestries decorating the walls and framed papyrus prints. There are some really old looking stone statues and large pillows on the floor instead of couches. This does not look like the inside of a 60-year-old woman’s suburban house. Except, of course, for the cats. There are cats everywhere, lounging in patches of the disappearing sun and regarding me lazily from behind slitted reptilian eyes.
“Please,” she says, “won’t you sit down?”
She sinks gracefully down onto an adjoining cushion. Somehow, Mrs. Tsuji’s spaniel has wormed his way out of his carrier and he limps over to Miss Miu, laying his bandaged paw on her lap. She strokes him gently.
“I like dogs,” she says absently “but I really do prefer cats.”
“That’s what I’m here about.” I try to make my voice sound hard and intimidating, usually not a difficult thing for me, but somehow I’m the one feeling frightened.
“The two cats on your porch, where did you get them?”
She reaches up a hand, pulls the clip out of her hair and it falls down her back in a shining wave of jet black silk, not a trace of gray left in it. She laughs musically, an eerie sound, like chimes in a desert.
“I took them,” she says, “from the men I killed. But you already knew that, didn’t you Detective?” She regards me from eyes as heavily hooded as one of her cats, eyes that are no longer old and wrinkled, but onyx black and glowing with an ancient malevolence.
“Who the fuck are you?”
She stands up slowly and I realize that she has been changing in front of my eyes. Gone is any trace of the diminutive little cat lady. A tall, beautiful woman stands in front of me, long black hair, the tattered remnants of the too small clothes hanging from her bronze skin.
“I have had many forms,” she says, “and been called many things and I have been alive for a very very long time.”
She bends over me, her silken hair falling around my face like a shroud. Her fingers brush the day old stubble on my cheek and I see that she has claws; long slivering, silvery claws like stiletto daggers extending from her fingertips.
“Their blood was mine,” she says and I can feel the whispering menace of those claws against my skin. “Their souls were tainted and the darkness in their blood belongs to me. It is my right, as it has always been, to take what belongs to me.”
“But the boy,” I say. “The others, the men, I found out what they did, some of it at least. But the boy?”
She gestures and the spaniel comes trotting over to her, completely undisturbed by the talons lengthened from her hands.
“He did this.” I see the spaniel’s bandaged paw. “And more. He took pleasure from inflicting pain on those weaker than him. They all did. They all do. Until I find them and then the pleasure is all mine.” She smiles and I shiver. The Abyssinian, Bonita, comes over to her and she strokes its fur.
“Do you know how tainted a soul must be to harm something so helpless, something that cannot help but trust? And to take pleasure in that harm?” Her lip curls up in a snarl revealing her long, sharply pointed teeth.
Bonita purrs gently.
“I let them watch sometimes. They like to watch. They like to know.”
Her eyes shift to my face, beautiful cat’s eyes, slivered black pupils like portals.
“What about you, Detective? You like to watch, too, don’t you? There is a deep blackness in your soul. That is why you are so good at what you do, your fascination with the taint, your affinity to it.”
My breath shudders. She senses my fear and she laughs. She brushes my hair back from my face with the tip of one of her claws, tilts my head back so my throat is exposed like a lamb’s.
“Don’t be afraid,” she says, “you have not yet crossed the line, the line that will make your blood my right. But you will, I can sense the taint in you. And when you do, I will find you.”
My heart races wildly, like a teenager’s, like the first time I knew I was gonna fuck a girl and my voice cracks when I speak, but I don’t care anymore.
“No,” I say, and her head tilts quizzically to the side like a cat studying a mouse trying to crawl away.
“You’re right. I’m a sick fuck. I have a dark soul. I know it. I’ve always known it. When I was a kid, I wanted to do those things- things to animals, things to the smaller kids. And now, I have visions sometimes of Abby, with bruises flowering on her skin, welts of blood dripping from her mouth. So take me now. Don’t wait for me to hurt someone or something helpless. Do it now.”
She brushes the tip of a claw over my mouth, down my throat.
“It has been a long time since I have had a sacrifice willingly given.” Her eyes are more golden now, and less black. She bites her lip and a tiny drop of blood runs down the length of one of her teeth and stains the corner of her mouth.
“The bl
ood of a sacrifice come willingly is always sweetest.” She smiles.
“Do it,” I say, harshly, “do it.”
Her hair covers me, a veil of death and I see the shine of her teeth as she whispers,
“I will be gentle.” And then everything is gone in a rush of pain. There is no gentleness as I feel her teeth puncture my throat and the excruciating agony of her talons shredding the flesh from my spine. Consciousness stubbornly persists and nothing blurs the pain until I see her eyes, glowing red and telling me to taste oblivion instead of the unending hell she gives to all those other fucks. I have one brief moment of satisfaction and then… nothingness.
Abby peered out the front door again. It sure was taking Hank a while to get back. She pushed her hair off the back of her neck. God, it was hot tonight. A movement at her periphery caught her eye. Slinking around the corner of the garage was a huge tom cat, a big, handsome fellow with eyes that reminded her strangely of something. It regarded her levelly, like a person.
“Hiya, bud,” she said after a moment. The cat took this as an opening and sauntered over to her, rubbing gently against her legs.
“Well, hell,” she said, after reaching down to stroke it gently. “Come on in. If Hank doesn’t get back soon, you can have his steak.”
DEVIL IN 206
By Randy Chandler
Trench was dozing behind a newspaper in the lobby when the call came. The assistant manager, Doyle, paged him in his rich baritone and Trench folded the Miami Herald, got up and ambled to the counter, where the guy was trying to strike a debonair pose in his arched cubbyhole. Trench thought the impersonation needed some work but he didn’t say so.
“Disturbance in 206,” Doyle said. “205 says it sounds violent.”
“Swell,” Trench said.
Trench took the service elevator to avoid the talkative operator of the public lift. The guy wasn’t a bad sort, but Trench had already had his fill of the man’s war stories. He didn’t need overblown reminders of the war he was trying to forget.