Believe Me

by JP Delaney

  “Oh, I’ll prove it all right.” He’s angry now, as angry as he was that time in the theater. He reaches up and puts his hands around my throat. “If they were listening, they wouldn’t let me throttle you,” he says between clenched teeth. “They wouldn’t let me do this.”

  I feel his fingers digging deeper, tightening. I can’t breathe. I reach up and try to pull them away but he’s too strong, his grip squeezing ever harder. The blood starts to pound in my ears. I claw at his hands. Fireworks pop and sparkle in front of my eyes. There’s a moment of light-headedness and then I’m falling, falling down a tunnel.

  I come to in his arms. His hands cradle me gently. My throat hurts.

  “I’m sorry,” I whisper.

  “No. I’m sorry,” he says quietly. He holds me tighter. He’s shaking.

  “Don’t be. I deliberately provoked you, my love. It was a trust game. And it worked.”

  77

  I wake before dawn. Beside me, Patrick sleeps like a cat, his breathing so silent he might as well be dead. Even in repose his body seems coiled and watchful, a hair-trigger assemblage of muscle and sinew.

  Quietly, so as not to wake him, I slip from under the covers and go to the kitchen for some juice. My throat’s still sore, and we go off-book tomorrow—today, now. I can’t risk losing my voice.

  As I drink, I look out at the city. I love the way the big windows make these apartments feel like a stage set. It’s like we’re on show, a doll’s house anyone can peer into, though actually this neighborhood is quiet at night and the street below is almost deserted.

  I’m thinking about Stella.

  In class once, Paul got us to play a game in which three people are given either a red hat or a black hat. They can’t see their own hat, only the others’, but the first person who can say what color they’re wearing wins. It’s an exercise in seeing a scene through other people’s eyes.

  That’s what I’m trying to do now.

  When I’d made my mock confession, Patrick had looked startled. And then baffled. Then angry. But not for one moment did he look convinced.

  Because he loves and trusts me?

  Because I’m not as good an actor as I think?

  Or because he knows I couldn’t possibly have done what I said…Because he was there himself when Stella died?

  A cop car speeds along the empty street, lights flashing, its siren thoughtfully turned off to avoid waking the sleeping residents. On its way to another murder, perhaps. Another set of lives torn apart.

  Unbidden, I hear Dr. Banner’s voice.

  DR. BANNER

  It’s not surprising you have these melodramatic delusions, Claire. They’re a symptom of your disorder. Tomorrow you’ll find yourself convinced of the exact opposite.

  I have to know, I think. I have to know who really killed her. Not because discovering Patrick’s a murderer would stop me loving him. But because, if he is a murderer, I don’t want him to keep it hidden from me.

  That’s my dark secret: The simple fact is, my love for him is so all-consuming that even if I knew he’d killed Stella, it wouldn’t change how I feel about him. But I couldn’t bear for him to have done something as momentous as that and not share it with me.

  Like Apollonie, I have to face into the darkness. To walk toward it.

  I can’t go to the police, of course. But there’s something else I could try.

  78

  >>Victor?

  >>Claire. I was hoping you’d come back to Necropolis one day.

  >>Victor, I need a favor.

  >> Anything, my angel.

  >>You’re not going to like it.

  >>Try me. I’m surprisingly broad-minded, for a pervert.

  >>I want to meet you. Properly, I mean. IRL.

  There’s a long pause. I can almost hear the hum of telephone wires, the buzz of interference, the whistles and clicks of distant exchanges as our silence bounces across satellites, streaks from computer to computer, snakes down endless fiber-optic cables—

  >>Is this a date, Claire?

  I think how many men I’ve led on, how many I’ve acted for, become a delusion, a figment of their dreams.

  >>No. Sorry. Just friends. But believe me, it’s important. You’re the only one I think I can trust.

  >>Where are you?

  >>New York. You?

  >>Near enough.

  >>Where’s good for you?

  >>There’s a cybercafé in the East Village, on St. Marks Place. I could meet you there at noon.

  >>How will I recognize you?

  >>Log onto the site. I’ll tell you then.

  >>Thanks, Victor. I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important.

  79

  I get to the café fifteen minutes early and choose a computer in the corner. Beside me, a Japanese student is engaged in earnest cyber-chat with his girlfriend. Nearby, a heavyset businesswoman types a report, banging her keyboard energetically with two fingers. A teenage boy is playing a computer game. A giggling Italian couple are uploading pictures of their honeymoon.

  There’s also a middle-aged guy in a raincoat, fiddling with an empty Starbucks cup.

  I log onto Necropolis.

  >>You here, Victor?

  >>I’m here, Claire.

  >>Here in the website? Or here in the café?

  >>Both. Tell me what you look like.

  >>I’m twenty-five. Dark hair. I’m wearing a cashmere twinset that used to belong to someone else. I’m at the computer in the corner.

  >>You didn’t mention that you’re beautiful.

  I look up. The businesswoman smiles at me ruefully.

  80

  “But would you ever actually hurt anyone? Really hurt them, I mean?”

  Victor, whose real name is Corinne, shakes her head. “In my fantasies, I dream about sexual domination. But I also dream about world peace, living with a supermodel, and being a professional musician. I acknowledge my obligations to society, Claire, and that means that like anybody else I have to regulate my wants.” She shrugs. “Good submissives are hard to find, particularly if you’re a fat old dyke. But my straight friends don’t seem to have it much easier.”

  “Okay. I get that.”

  “Tell me what this is about,” Corinne suggests.

  I explain about the police sting, my theory that it might somehow have been linked to Necropolis. I have to stop myself from sounding like some crazy woman. “It was the police psychologist who suggested I go on that site in the first place,” I finish. “If it hadn’t been for her, it would never have occurred to me to take my character in that direction. And then of course Patrick appeared to be into all this weird stuff too, even though he wasn’t really.”

  “Speaking as someone who’s into that weird stuff myself, I’d say that’s pretty generous of him.”

  “Sorry—I didn’t mean—”

  She waves away my apologies with a smile.

  “So what I’m wondering is—why Necropolis?” I say. “Why would a psychological profiler be so interested in a perfectly legal BDSM site?”

  Corinne hesitates. “There may be more to Necropolis than meets the eye. At least, that’s what some users say. There’s talk of a part that’s hosted on the Dark Web—a part even members can’t access unless they’ve been invited. That’s where the heavy stuff happens.”

  “What do you mean, heavy stuff?”

  “Trading. Images and videos, I understand.”

  “Illegal images?”

  Corinne nods. “From what I hear. I never asked for details. That’s not my thing.”

  I’m not surprised to discover that the website Kathryn Latham pushed me toward was part of something illegal. But where does Patrick fit into this?

  “An old desk full of dead ideas / Is not more full of secrets than my aching head,” Patrick had said to me the first time we met, his voice thi
ck with conviction. Was that a clue? Was this the secret he was obliquely referring to, using Baudelaire’s words as a screen to disguise their deeper truth?

  If he was buying images on Necropolis, and Stella came across them, that might explain why she was talking about leaving him; even, perhaps, why she was so agitated that night.

  And that, I realize, is the difference between us. What she was frightened of, I’m intrigued by. If Patrick was doing something like that, I won’t be shocked. Quite the opposite: I’ll welcome the chance to show I can accept that part of him. To deepen our intimacy. Like a moth drawn toward the flame.

  81

  When I get to the bar where we’ve arranged to meet, Henry’s already ordering his second beer. He was there early, he tells me. Since Stella’s murder, the law firm has cut back on spousal work and he’s been reassigned to debt collection.

  “Computer searches, mostly. The boring stuff. My guess is they’ll be pushing me out soon. My particular skill set’s not much use to them anymore.”

  “What if I had some freelance work for you?”

  He raises his eyebrows. “You want me to check out your boyfriend?”

  For a moment I’m almost tempted, then I shake my head. “This isn’t a person. More like a thing.”

  Briefly I explain what I’ve learned about Necropolis. “I need you to take a look at it. See if you can get into the hidden part, somehow.”

  “You know,” Henry says thoughtfully, “there were a couple of things about Stella’s murder that always seemed strange to me. You recall how jumpy she was that night?”

  I nod, remembering. She’d been pacing up and down by the windows as I entered.

  STELLA

  You will be careful, won’t you? Promise me you’ll be careful.

  “She had a USB stick—a little metal thumb drive on a keychain,” Henry continues. “She kept twisting it around, remember?”

  I think back, picturing it. The way she’d wrung her hands. Squeezing something that for a moment I’d thought was a rosary, before I’d seen the glint of a keychain. And how, when she’d warned me about her husband—He’s like no man you’ve ever met—she’d glanced down. Almost as if it was the proof of what she was saying.

  “This is a long shot, but if we’re talking illegal images, maybe that’s what was on the stick,” Henry adds, reaching for his drink.

  “Did you mention it to the police?”

  “Sure. But they said nothing like that was found when they searched her suite. They thought either I was mistaken, or the killer took it with him.”

  I sit back, thinking. “Stella said the whole point of having me entrap Patrick was to get some leverage over him. In which case, maybe the thumb drive was leverage too. But if it was missing, how come Kathryn Latham already knew about Necropolis when she briefed me?”

  “Perhaps she was FBI.”

  I glance at him. “Why do you say that?”

  “First, because it would explain why she was using a false name—that’s standard for FBI agents on field operations. Second, because it’s the Bureau’s job to keep tabs on illegal websites. If they were already aware of this Necropolis thing—monitoring it, even—that might be how she got involved. There’s an electronic questionnaire cops have to fill in after a murder for something called VICAP—the Violent Criminal Apprehension Program. Most times, it’s a pain in the ass—thirty pages of questions, just to find out if your crime matches another one that hasn’t been solved yet either. But just occasionally, you’d hit ‘Send’ and get an automated message telling you to call a number at Quantico. If the computer thought there was a link between Stella’s murder and something on that site…”

  “Which there was,” I say, nodding. “Baudelaire. That’s why it’s called Necropolis. The people on that site are into Baudelaire. And not in a nice way, either.”

  82

  “I spoke to Henry today,” I say.

  “Who?” Patrick doesn’t look up from his book.

  “The ex-cop I used to work with. I wanted to ask him about the police investigation.”

  He does look up then. “I thought we agreed we weren’t going to rake that up again.”

  “No. You agreed that. I never agreed anything. The point is, Henry told me something interesting. Stella had a thumb drive. The killer took it, but it’s just possible it contained images from a website called Necropolis.” I pause. “I need to know if that name means anything to you.”

  Patrick looks at me steadily, his face expressionless. “Yes,” he says at last. “It does.”

  I exhale. “You’ve been on the site. You bought their images.”

  “No.” He shakes his head. “Some thumbnails just arrived in my inbox one day. That was the domain name they were sent from—Necropolis.”

  “But why were they sent to you, of all people?”

  “They were digital photographs of imagery relating to Les Fleurs du Mal,” he says quietly. “Re-creations, if you like.”

  “Why?” I’m puzzled.

  “In the old days, connoisseurs’ editions of poetry would sometimes have plates—illustrations of the poems by well-known artists. If the subject matter was erotic or obscene, the editions would be created in tiny quantities, for private collectors.” He indicates the bookshelves that fill one whole wall of the apartment. “I have some rare illustrated volumes of Les Fleurs du Mal myself.”

  “And that’s what these were? Illustrations of the poems? Only photographed, rather than drawn?”

  He nods. “I thought they were ridiculous—so obviously Photoshopped that the whole effect of Baudelaire’s verse was lost. I replied, saying so. I never heard from Necropolis again.”

  “Do you still have the images?”

  “No.” He glances toward the bookcase. “Well…”

  “Patrick, please. It may be important.”

  He sighs. “I kept one. Just one. The cover. The least unpleasant.”

  He goes over to the bookshelves. Pulling a single sheet from between two volumes, he hands it to me. Involuntarily, I gasp.

  The photograph shows a woman’s flat stomach, her skin tone somewhere between brown and black. A downy rosette of hairs surrounds her navel, catching the light from a source out of shot. Another neat line of fuzz leads downward. Because of how it’s been cropped, together the navel and fuzz resemble a flower. It’s a delicate, tender image—except for the way the words LES FLEURS DU MAL have been gouged above the belly button, deep into the skin itself. It doesn’t look Photoshopped to me.

  “My God,” I whisper.

  He nods. “I know. The others were in a similar vein.”

  “Were they all…” I stop, aware how incongruous this will sound about something so gruesome. “Were they all this beautiful?”

  “I suppose they were, in a way,” he says quietly.

  I stare at the picture, unable to tear my eyes from it. “Beauty from evil.”

  “Beauty from evil,” he agrees.

  “Did the email contain anything else?”

  “Just a very brief note. Something like: ‘Another flower from the same seed. Another transfiguration. From an admirer.’ ”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It’s a reference to something I said in my introduction. The job of a translator, I wrote, is not just to transcribe from one language to another, but to transfigure—to make the poems come alive again in a new century, a new medium.”

  “And here he is, doing just that. Only where you use words, he’s making photographs. He’s doing it for real.”

  Patrick frowns. “Perhaps.”

  “Did you tell the police?”

  “I told them there’d been some emails, yes. They didn’t seem very interested.”

  “The regular cops wouldn’t have made the connection. It was Kathryn Latham who did that, much
later.” My eyes keep being drawn back to the image. “Another flower from the same seed—it’s almost as if he imagines Les Fleurs du Mal sprouting and multiplying. The evil spreading. And you’re the person who inspired him.” I realize something else. “That’s what’s behind the second act of your play, isn’t it—where the prosecutor asks Baudelaire how he’d feel if someone was inspired to commit an evil act by one of his poems. That’s the position you’re in. You have fans. Followers, even. And one of them, when you were rude about his work, killed Stella.”

  “It’s a possibility,” Patrick says uneasily. “Let’s not jump ahead of ourselves.”

  “But Patrick—don’t you see what this means? This play—we’re charging straight into some nutcase’s private fantasies. How’s he going to feel about what we’re doing?”

  “Why should he feel anything?”

  I look at the picture again, repulsive and strangely alluring at the same time. “I don’t think this man thinks of himself as just some sick pornographer. I think he sees himself as an artist. If he doesn’t like the play, he won’t just write a bad notice in the Times. He’ll take it more personally than that.”

  “I don’t see why he should. But if you’re worried…Do you want to back out?”

  For a moment, I’m almost tempted. But as Patrick said, this may all just be some wild theory. And I’m not about to throw away my big opportunity because of something that happened before I even came on the scene.

  “Of course not,” I say. “But perhaps we should start being careful.”

  83

  And then, jogging around Morningside two days later, I see something on a bench. Someone’s left their paperback behind.

  As I get closer, I see it’s a copy of Les Fleurs du Mal.