Limbus, Inc.

by Anne C. Petty

  “Strip clubs don’t hire kids.”

  “Anyone can get a false I.D., Mr. Hunter,” she said coldly. “You know that.”

  I pointed at the screen. “Where’s this shit happening?”

  “The most recent—the sixteenth—was found in a storm drain in New York.”

  “When?”

  “Twenty-six days ago.”

  “It wasn’t in the papers.”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  She took a moment on that. “We don’t know. None of these have been in the media. Not one.”

  “That’s impossible. Murders like this are front page.”

  She nodded. “They should be. This should be all over social media and Internet news, but it’s not.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense. If you know about it and you want something done, then why don’t you take this to the press?”

  Another pause. “We have.”

  “And—?”

  “We’ve contacted six separate reporters in six cities. All six have died.”

  “Died?”

  “Three heart attacks, one stroke, one fatal epileptic seizure, one burned to death after smoking in bed.”

  I stared at her. “You’re shitting me.”

  “I’m not.”

  “What about the Feds? If this is happening across the country, then the FBI should—”

  “They are investigating it. But they’ve had some problems of their own with the case. The lead agent fell down a flight of stairs and broke his neck. Freak accident. His replacement was killed in a car accident when an ambulance ran a red light. That sort of thing. The investigation is ongoing but agents have been shying away from it. They think it’s jinxed.”

  That didn’t surprise me. Even this deep into the 21st century there was a lot of superstition. Everyone has it—from people who knock wood to baseball players who have to wear their lucky socks. Cops have it in spades, just like soldiers, just like anyone whose day job involves real life and death stuff. When I was on the cops back in Minnesota I heard about several jinxed cases. No one wants to say it out loud because of how it sounds, but people still fear the boogeyman.

  I got up and crossed to my file cabinet, opened the bottom drawer, and took out the only bottle of really good booze I owned—an unopened bottle of Pappy Van Winkle’s 23-Year-Old bourbon. At two-hundred and fifty dollars a bottle it was way out of my price range, but a satisfied client had given it to me last Christmas. I brought it and two clean glasses back to my desk, and the woman watched while I opened the bottle and poured two fingers for each of us. I didn’t ask if she drank. She didn’t tell me to stop pouring.

  I sat down and we each had some. We didn’t toast. You don’t toast for stuff like this.

  The bourbon was legendary. I’d read all about it. It’s aged in charred white oak barrels. Sweet, smooth, with a complex mix of honey and toffee flavors.

  It might as well have been Gatorade for all I could tell. I drank it because my laptop was still fanning through the images. And because that, even if I didn’t take this case, those dead women were going to live inside my head for the rest of my life. You can forget some things. Other things take up residence, building themselves into the stone and wood and plaster of the structure of your mind.

  I suppose if I was capable of dismissing this, or forgetting it, then I wouldn’t be who I am. Maybe I’d be happier, I don’t know.

  I closed the laptop, finished the bourbon and set my cup down.

  “What do you want from me?” I asked.

  The woman opened her purse again and removed another envelope. She placed it on the desk and slid it across to me. When I opened it I could see the glossy border of a photograph. I hesitated, not wanting to see another mutilated girl. But I was already in motion in this, so I sucked it up and slid the photo out of the envelope.

  It was another girl.

  This one had her skin.

  She was a beautiful teenager, with bright blue eyes and a lot of curves that were evident in the skimpy costume she wore. A blue glitter g-string and high heels.

  “Her name is Denise Sturbridge,” said the woman. “She’s only fifteen, which makes her the youngest of the women in question, but as you can see she looks quite a bit older. She’s a runaway from Easton here in Pennsylvania. Abusive father, indifferent mother. Pretty common story, and very much in keeping with the backstories of the other girls. She took off four months ago, got picked up by the kind of predator who trolls bus stops and train stations. He got her high and turned her out to work conventions. She was scouted out of there to work in a gentleman’s club near the Philadelphia airport. Fake I.D. that says she’s nineteen. She dances under the name of Bambi.”

  I set the photo down.

  “Tell me the rest,” I said.

  “She went missing two days ago. We believe that she will be number seventeen.”

  “That’s a big leap. A lot of girls go missing.”

  She nodded. “She fits a type.”

  I glanced at the closed laptop and the black flash drive. “So the killer is targeting exotic dancers.”

  “Yes.”

  “And he’s been on the move from Seattle, across the country. Now you think he’s here.”

  “Yes. And there’s not much time.”

  I cocked my head. “Now how the hell would you know that?”

  “Because it’s been four-hundred and seventy-five days since the first girl died. The coroner in Seattle was able to determine the day she died. We think Denise will be murdered in the next twenty-four hours.”

  “How do you figure that?”

  “Do the math, Mr. Hunter.”

  I did.

  Didn’t need a calculator, either. It was simple arithmetic. Add a day to the span of the killings and divide by seventeen.

  I could feel my blood turn to ice.

  “Oh shit,” I said.

  She studied me with her dark eyes and I could see the moment when she knew that I knew that she knew. Chain of logic, none of it said aloud.

  Seventeen murders. One every twenty-eight days.

  A cycle.

  Sure.

  But a very specific kind of cycle. She gave me a small nod.

  I didn’t need to look at the calendar. Not for the next kill and not for any of the kills before that. The pattern screamed at me.

  She slid the first envelope across the desk. “Fee and expenses,” she said.

  I didn’t touch it, didn’t look at it. I stared down into the smiling eyes of a girl pretending to be a woman who was a couple of days away from becoming a red horror someone would dump in an alley.

  Maybe tomorrow.

  “We want you to find this girl,” she said.

  I said nothing.

  “There’s a Word document on the drive that has a complete copy of the case file. Police and FBI reports. Coroner’s report, lab reports. Everything.”

  I didn’t ask her how she’d obtained all of that.

  “What if I can’t find her in time?”

  The woman shook her head. “Then find who’s doing this before there’s a victim eighteen. This isn’t going to stop, Mr. Hunter. Not unless someone stops it.”

  “The last kill was in New York. This is Philly. I wouldn’t know where to start.”

  She reached across and picked up the business card I’d found on the floor and held it out to me. “This should help.”

  I didn’t touch it. Didn’t have to. I could still smell it. I could still smell the blood.

  But now I understood.

  The woman stood up.

  This was the point where I should have asked ‘Why me?’ With all of the other cops and private investigators out there, why me?

  We both knew that I wasn’t going to ask that question. We both knew why me.

  Twenty-eight days.

  I didn’t stand up, didn’t shake her hand, didn’t walk her to the door. Didn’t tell her whether I was going to take the case.


  We both knew the answer to that, too.

  “I haven’t said that I’m taking the case,” I said.

  She flicked a glance at the envelope, then shrugged. “You will if you want to, and you won’t if you don’t. Our policy is to encourage, not to compel.”

  “Your policy. You still haven’t told me who you are. I mean, what’s your interest? What’s this Limbus thing and why do you people care?”

  No answer to that.

  “Okay,” I said, “tell me this. The reporters who died. The heart attacks and strokes and stuff. You think any of that was legit?”

  “Do you?”

  “Was there any investigation?”

  “Routine, in all cases. No one connected the cases because there was no evidence of foul play.”

  “Anyone do autopsies on the reporters who croaked?”

  “On heart attacks? No. None of the victims were autopsied except for the man who burned to death, and that was ruled death by misadventure.”

  “And the stuff that happened to the feds looking into it?”

  “As I said, this has become known as a bad luck case.”

  “Do you believe in bad luck?” I asked.

  She gave me a smile that lifted the crescent scar beside her mouth. “We believe in quite a lot of things, Mr. Hunter.”

  With that she turned, walked out and pulled the door shut behind her.

  *

  I sat there and stared at the closed door for maybe ten minutes. I don’t think I did anything except blink and breathe the whole time.

  Twenty-eight days.

  Bodies torn apart.

  I picked up the card and sniffed the blood again. Deeply. Eyes closed. Letting the scent go all the way into my lungs, all the way into my senses. I took another breath, and another. Then I put the card down. I wouldn’t need it anymore. That scent was locked into me now. I’d know it anywhere.

  Interesting that this broad knew that about me.

  We believe in quite a lot of things, Mr. Hunter.

  “Shit,” I told the empty room.

  I glanced at the envelope. Even if it was filled with small bills, fives and tens, it had to be a couple of hundred. I guessed, though, that the denominations were higher. If it was twenties and fifties, then there were thousands in there. It was a fat envelope.

  It sat there and I didn’t pick it up. Didn’t really want to touch it.

  Not yet.

  I had this thing. If I took the money then I was definitely going to take the case.

  Then I opened my laptop, accessed the Word document, and began reading. While I did that I tried not to look at the big calendar pinned to the wall by the filing cabinet. It was this year’s Minnesota Vikings calendar. I liked the Vikings but I didn’t give much of a warm shit as to who was featured on this month’s page. Or any month. The calendar’s only important feature was a set of small icons that showed the phases of the moon.

  Twenty eight days.

  One day to go.

  One day for little Bambi.

  A single day until the killer took her skin and her life and emptied her of her dreams and hopes and breath and smiles and life.

  A day.

  One day until the next full moon.

  In my blood and under my skin I could already feel the moon pulling at me. Tearing, clawing.

  Screaming at me.

  Howling at me.

  *

  When you don’t have a clue you start at the beginning and see if you can pick up the scent. For most guys in my line of work that’s a metaphor. Guess I’m a little different.

  The case file for Bambi—Denise Sturbridge—said that she worked four shifts a week at a strip club called ViXXXens in Northeast Philly. A quick Google search told me that the place was owned by Dante Entertainment and managed by one George Palakas.

  I live in Old City near Front and South, so it was an easy trip up I-95. I got off at Grant Avenue, cut across to Bustleton Avenue and followed that to within half a block of the northeastern-most city limits. Couldn’t miss the club. The sign was massive, with a neon silhouette of an improbably endowed woman winking on and off in blue and pink. Beneath the sign squatted an ugly three-story building that looked like it might have been built in Colonial times. Who knows, maybe Washington even slept there. But that was then. Now it crouched in embarrassment. Whitewashed plank siding, smoked windows blocked by beer signs, twenty or thirty cars in the parking lot, and bass notes shuddering along the ground from speakers that were way too powerful for the size of the building.

  I parked near a pair of Harleys and got out.

  I’ve been in a hundred places like this. As a cop, as a P.I. Once, when I was in high school, as a patron. Sure, I’m a healthy straight guy, but I’m not the demographic for joints like this. It’s not an economic thing or a class thing or even an education thing. I think it comes down to personal awareness. It’s hard to sit on a stool, drinking beer after beer, watching a woman you don’t know and can’t touch gyrate and take off her clothes to bad dance pop, when everyone else is doing the same thing. None of it’s really for you. It’s for your beer money and tip money. It’s about you bringing your friends so they can spend their money. It’s about you becoming a regular so you contribute to the profit of both dancer and club. But it lacks anything of true human connection. You aren’t friends with the friendly bartenders and you won’t have sex with the sexy dancers. You’re an open wallet.

  So who goes to places like these? Like I said, it’s not a class of men. Even before I entered I knew that there would be guys in construction worker boots and denims, and guys in good business suits. There would be married guys and single guys. There would be college grads and high school dropouts. There would be white, black, Asian and Latino guys. What there wouldn’t be would be very many guys who were genuinely happy in their lives. The ones who were, probably only came here with buddies. More for their friends than for the silicone tits and painted mouths up on stage. Or guys coming here for their first legal drinks, surrounded by fathers, uncles, friends; a big shit-eating grin stapled onto their faces to hide their actual embarrassment.

  The rest?

  You couldn’t even call them lost and lonely. A lot of them aren’t. But they’re missing something. Some connection, or maybe some optimism. Whatever it is, they either came here looking for a thread of it, or because they gave up looking and the music here was too loud for introspection and self-evaluation.

  I drew in a breath through my nostrils, held it, let it out, and went inside.

  It was two o’clock in the afternoon and the place was already three-quarters full. Too early for a bouncer, so there was no cover and no hassle. The bar was a big oblong with seats all the way around it and two small square stages inside, intercut by a bank of cash registers and liquor shelves. A dozen beer taps, but none of them were for good beers. The two brands were Heineken, which was a short step up from dog piss, and Budweiser, which was a full step down. No Yuengling, no good local microbrews. You didn’t come here to sample a good beer. You came here to drink a lot of beers quickly and cheaply so that you didn’t feel weird tucking part of your paycheck into a girl’s g-string for no god damn good reason at all.

  There were two dancers working the afternoon shift. The one closest to the door was probably pushing forty but she’d had a lot of work done and kept her muscles toned. My guess was that she was a single mother with no college and shaking her ass earned her more cash—particularly unreportable cash—than asking drive-through customers if they wanted their Happy Meal giant-sized. Her eyes flicked around, looking for the kind of guy who would pony up a buck just to have her come closer, or the kind of guy who would toss her a buck to make her go away. There were plenty of both. When her eyes briefly met mine she got no signal that she could use and her gaze swept on. A rotating spot swept across her face and I could see some old acne scars that were nearly buried under lots of pancake. Not a pretty woman, but probably not a junkie or a hooker. Someone willing to
do this to put food in her kids’ mouths and make as good a life for them as she could.

  I moved on and took a seat between the two stages.

  The second dancer was half the age of the first. She’d be skinny if it wasn’t for plastic boobs and a decent ass. Sticks for arms and legs that had shape only because of high heels and patterned stockings. She wore a red thong and flesh-colored pasties over her nipples. And although she had a pretty face, she was about as sexy as a root canal. At least to me, but like I said, I’m not the demographic.

  The bartender drifted up and used a single uptic of his chin to ask what I wanted.

  I ordered a vodka martini with three olives just to see what kind of expression it put on his face. His face turned to wood.

  “Bud,” I said, and he curled just enough of his lip to let me know that he appreciated the joke. He drew a Budweiser and slid a mug in front of me. I put a twenty on the bar and tapped it to let him know I was starting a tab on it. He nodded and moved away.

  The song that was playing was so gratingly loud that it could sterilize an elk. The lyrics were meaningless pap. Something about ‘high school charms’, which gave it all a pedophile vibe.

  The other patrons were staring at the dancers. The music was too loud for conversation. One guy was playing video poker and eating fistfuls of beer nuts without looking at them. Two guys in dark suits sat at the far end drinking dark mixed drinks that I’m pretty sure were actually Coke in highball glasses. I marked them in my mind. Strip clubs don’t let you sit there and drink soda, which means that these guys were either part of the staff—off-shift bouncers, maybe; or they were friends of the house. I saw them watching me as I watched them. One of them gave me a nod and I nodded back. That’s not a friendly exchange, not in places like this. It’s one player letting the other player know that they’re all in the game.

  When the record changed, I left the beer and the twenty as placeholders, turned slowly on my stool until I spotted the entrance to the back rooms. I headed that way, and a short hall took me past employee restrooms, a store room, a fire door, all the way to a door marked OFFICE.