The Cleopatra Murders

by Mic Palmer

  All the world seemed to be conspiring against him, including Betsy Tanner, whose green eyes shimmered with poorly suppressed excitement.

  “Who is Jack Lorenz? What drives him? Raised in the upper middle class neighborhood of New Hyde Park, New York by his parents, Frank and Nancy Lorenz, both of whom are now deceased, he seemed to have every advantage. While his father worked for Aeroforce Contracting as an accountant, his stay at home mother acted as the chairperson of a local charity. By all accounts they were said to be well liked members of the community, even while their son at times attracted unwanted attention. Often by himself, he’d march around the neighborhood shooting up street signs, garbage cans, and various forms of plant life with his BB gun. On one occasion he even shot a raccoon…”

  “Yeah, me and half the other kids on the block,” Jack interjected.

  “As an only child, he often made up games for himself. One such diversion involved throwing a tennis ball dipped in flour against the brick wall in his backyard. For hours he could be seen creating the dotted outlines of dogs, cats, faces, houses, just about anything you could imagine. Classmates described him as friendly, but somewhat strange and aloof. With parents well into their sixties by the time he entered high school, he always seemed to be a bit behind the times, out of touch, old fashioned, making his passion for art a bit surprising. A former teacher described him as having quite a bit of technical aptitude, but very little in the way of real artistic ability…”

  To see his life flash before him like this was unbearable. They made it seem small, anomalous, incomplete. “Fuck you,” he grumbled.

  By the time he was a senior, he was immersed in a world of sketch pads and oils, almost to the exclusion of all else, his friends, his family, even Ms. Callenback, who at the time went by the name Carpenter.

  “I was out all the time and I hated oils,” he groused. “Where the hell is this coming from?”

  “After high school Lorenz set off for art school in Mexico, but his dreams of fame and fortune were soon dashed when according to the principal, Carlo Alverez, young Lorenz’s work was determined to be irrevocably two dimensional and derivative. “There was no fire,” he told this reporter. “No sense of truth.” Having been expelled for both his grades and attitude, the failed artist moved from one job to another with varying degrees of success.”

  “Failed artist? They make me sound like Hitler.”

  “He last worked for Bullick Investigations,” went on the reporter, “but was fired on the day the killings began. For more we go to Chuck DeSantos at the suspect’s former place of business.”

  Gomez’s head looked even bigger on television. “Jack seemed a bit dispirited,” he told the reporter.

  “Dispirited?” Jack uttered. “Where the hell did he come up with a word like that?”

  “He was having problems with women,” his friend went on. “On top of that I don’t think he liked what was doing. I got the feeling he felt he could do better. When he got fired, I guess he snapped.”

  Next was Bundy, all crimson and bilious. “He was always quiet and reserved, like he didn’t want you to know what he was thinking. A real oddball. You’d go on an assignment with him to watch someone, and he’d spend the whole time sketching, and they weren’t very good if you ask me.”

  Jack’s shirt was drenched, but as much as he wanted to turn it off and go back to sleep, he couldn’t. Instead he kept watching and hoping. Surely there must be someone who had something good to say about him.

  Next appeared Janet’s parents, with whom he had always gotten along very well. Nevertheless, they portrayed him as some sort of weirdo.

  “I’d just like five minutes with him,” cried the father.

  If this wasn’t bad enough, they had superimposed an old photo of him on the bottom of the screen. Taken by Bundy after a long night of drinking, he appeared just as strange and pathetic as everyone had imagined.

  With a wrinkled shirt, matted hair, and distant, glassy looking, bloodshot eyes, the photo had the look of a mug shot. At his heaviest, his face appeared bloated and spongy. There was no musculature to it, no strength. He was the picture of indulgence, privilege, hubris – a beardless Henry VIII. Even he could see this guy killing someone.

  Jack grabbed his head. “I can’t take it!”

  Changing the channel to Bill Butler, he was just in time for a special announcement.

  “This just in,” declaimed the white haired newscaster. “Confidential sources within the police department have just confirmed that Jack Lorenz, the prime suspect in the Cleopatra Murders, was institutionalized as a child for an unnamed disorder. Unfortunately, that’s all we have at this time.”

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Jack felt light headed, almost as though he were floating, but as much as he wanted to deny it, his mind was flooded with long suppressed thoughts and images, and all at once it came back to him.

  He was just a child, maybe six or seven. Away from home, he was surrounded by strangers. He recalled a small bed, white walls, white gloves, wires, monitors. The place smelled of ammonia and urine. He felt scared, abandoned, alone. It seemed like an eternity.

  “Was I actually institutionalized,” he thought to himself, “or am I just thinking about the time I had my tonsils removed?”

  “Why now?” queried the newswoman on the other channel, her white teeth gleaming through somber almost frowning lips. “After nearly a decade, what caused him to revisit his high school sweet heart? Was he hoping to find his bearings? Was he looking for absolution?”

  Shaking her head, the psychologist couldn’t wait to jump in. “The sociopath never doubts his bearings and has about as much use for forgiveness as a recluse for fame. They don’t feel; they don’t hurt. Many neuropsychologists believe that their nervous systems aren’t as sensitive as other peoples. Nothing much phases them. As a matter of fact, studies would tend to indicate that it is just this lack of sensation that drives many of them. They want to feel, so they do whatever they can to shock themselves, even if it involves murder. Nevertheless, they rarely believe that anything is wrong with them – quite the contrary as a matter of fact. Unburdened by the physical manifestations of fear or guilt, they tend to see themselves as something beyond the realm of normal men – less emotional, more logical, more capable of greatness.”

  “That’s certainly not me,” thought Jack to himself, but just as quickly he recalled how conceited he used to be, especially when it came to women.

  Betsy Tanner managed a look so thoughtful it appeared that her eyebrows would touch. “And he achieves this sense of greatness by killing defenseless women?”

  “Well,” continued the psychologist. “You have to understand that serial killers are not just sociopaths, but delusive sociopaths. Whether it’s from a childhood filled with abuse and alienation or totally unrelated factors, they have a propensity for fantasizing, daydreaming, constructing their own reality.”

  The journalist appeared perplexed. “But why go back to a woman he hadn’t seen in years?”

  Brushing her chin with her index finger, the psychologist was surprisingly candid. “Without speaking with him and knowing much about their relationship it’s difficult to say. There are thousands of possible narratives, some of which may still be in development.”

  Suddenly Jack felt as though someone had dropped an anvil on his chest. With the room spinning like a top, he couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move, couldn’t think. Leaving his body behind him, he was transported back to an incident from his childhood, the revelation of which would change everything.

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  It was late, well after midnight, but for some reason he was in the kitchen. Standing there in his Scooby Doo pajamas, he could still feel the icy chill of the tile floor beneath his naked feet. Just then his parents entered. They appeared shocked. “What did you do?” cried his mother, but he just stood there, covered in blood.

  Even now, he could still see it on his hands, feel it on his nose
, taste it on his lips, all thick and sweet, but strangely cold.

  Not knowing how he had wound up in the kitchen, he felt disoriented, surprised, vulnerable, as if he had just materialized there out of thin air.

  “It’s alright,” said his mother, as she took him up in her arms. After that he began to cry, which was the last thing he remembered.

  “How could I forget something like that?” Jack wondered.

  It was as if he had swept the whole incident from his mind. Now, however, he was certain that this must have been the episode that caused him to be taken away.

  He was young, very young, not more than seven years of age, yet even then there was a part of himself he couldn’t control. Beyond this, however, all he had were questions, especially concerning the source of the blood. Had he bitten the head off a mouse, slaughtered the neighbor’s cat, attacked one of his pets?

  He used to have a rabbit back then. Whatever became of Hoppy anyway? Was he the victim of some sort of latent blood lust?

  “Nonsense!” Jack told himself, “I’m no monster.” But the truth was he wasn’t sure of anything.

  The problem was that he never felt he knew himself. Whether imagined of real, he was haunted by a fuzzy genealogy, the importance of which seemed to intensify with each passing year. Who was he? Where did he come from? What was he capable of?

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Afraid to leave the hotel, Jack sat and stewed. Having finally gotten up the strength to turn off the television, he began to rehabilitate himself.

  “When my father got sick, who was the one who took care of him? Me!” he desperately told himself. As a matter of fact he felt it was his duty, even while it tore him apart. To watch this once vibrant human being wither away before his eyes was absolutely devastating, especially when he didn’t seem ready to go. Both fearful and melancholy, he complained of playing it too safe, wasting his life, never accomplishing anything, which Jack took to mean that his son wasn’t quite the person he had hoped him to be.

  Indeed, the old man could be critical and demanding. “What are you going to do with yourself?” he’d often carp. “It’s not too late. Why don’t you go back to school, learn a profession?”

  And so it went, for over a year. Nevertheless, Jack did his best to make him comfortable, including buying him a new television, flying in relatives, and getting him an electronic chair, to help him stand and sit. Toward the end he even bathed him.

  Feeling good about himself for a moment, Jack reflexively scanned his mind for a competing thought and eventually came up with the memory of how shamefully relieved he was when his father finally passed.

  “Did I even cry?” he fretted, and soon all of his doubts returned, but the pendulum was still swinging and before long he was congratulating himself for how lousy he felt during his last few weeks.

  After falling into a zombie like stupor for what seemed like an eternity, his father suddenly began to have moments of startling clarity, where he’d not only recall incidents thought long forgotten, but see them in a whole new light – like the time Jack and Janet had to miss school as a result of a bad stomach virus.

  “It’s funny,” his father told him – just days before his death – “but you know the way I used to like to have a little glass of scotch after work?”

  “Yes,” replied Jack, not quite sure of what he was driving at.

  “Well on the day you and Janet got sick, I had two glasses – the reason being it was so good, but until now I couldn’t figure out why.”

  Jack averted his glance.

  “It was just smoother than normal, more smoky, less sweet, but what did I know. I just figured I got a good mash.”

  A Cheshire cat grin came over Jack’s face.

  “Didn’t I tell you to stay out of my liquor?” joked his father.

  “Yes you did.”

  “What was left, about half a bottle?”

  “More like three quarters.”

  “And how much of it did you drink?”

  “All of it.”

  “Serves you right.”

  Feeling nauseas at the very thought of it, Jack took a sip of water. “We couldn’t eat for a week.”

  “Boy, you must have thought I was an awful fool,” Mr. Lorenz commented. “What did you replace it with?”

  “I don’t know. Something her parents had. Not for a minute did we think anyone could tell the difference. To us it just tasted like poison.”

  The old man let out a belly laugh. “So that’s what you do with poison – chug it down? I’m glad I didn’t keep any arsenic in the house.”

  Suddenly, in the midst of almost unbearable suffering, his father had become a sleuth, but more than that, he reminded Jack of how he used to be. Again, he was jovial and witty, making the sword hanging over him that much more conspicuous.

  That’s what really got to Jack – not the times when he seemed all but gone, but the moments when he’d remind him of who he really was, when there was still a connection, when he seemed to have something worth living for. So yes; perhaps he didn’t shed any tears over his death, but that’s because he had used them all up while he was still alive.

  Chapter Fifty

  Feeling better by the minute, Jack took a hot shower and then jumped back into bed with his art book.

  Opening it up toward the end he came across the blurry haystacks of Monet, the diaphanous boaters of Cassatt, and molecular almost evaporating children of Pissaro.

  “I don’t know,” Jack responded. Even while the paintings were a bit sketchy for his taste, he couldn’t help but feel there was something to them, especially given what he had just read about Platonism and the Renaissance.

  The physical world is always changing and decaying, but through reason, through art, through beauty we are able to transcend it all and peek, if ever so briefly, into the realm of the perfect. The process, however, is incremental, cumulative, slow. More than that it requires a permanent declaration of war against all that has come before.

  “Art is a quiet killer,” Orlando liked to tell his class, “it breeds pain, conflict, destruction, but in the end something new is born, something more nuanced, more complete, more true.”

  Jack, however, wasn’t so sure. Where was it written that you couldn’t go backwards? Why couldn’t art lead to something less nuanced, less complete, less true? On the other hand maybe the process was more constrained, revealing not greater truths, but different aspects of truth, like pieces of a puzzle.

  Whatever the case may be, Jack was beginning to see something in the more modern works that had previously eluded him. Quickly turning from one page to the next, he was intrigued with the idea that Impressionism spoke to a fundamental albeit byzantine facet of reality. As a result he spent a good five minutes studying two rather ordinary works of Van Gogh – one depicting a claustrophobic, ill-proportioned bedroom and the other an elaborate golden tree. While there was nothing real about them, nothing photographic, they somehow filled him with the sensation that he was a floating, swirling, disembodied part of them. Like Michelangelo’s unfinished carvings, they seemed as if they were coming into being, only now Jack could feel the imposition of his own mind, which likewise altered, caused him to become that much more aware, and so he read on.

  Psychic precursors it seemed had something to do with the mind taking certain basic colors and forms and converting them into the things we see. Kandinsky and Miro as a matter of fact claimed to exploit these triggers for the purpose of getting closer to what’s really out there, but Jack wondered whether that was even possible.

  After all of these years he finally felt he understood the stupid question about a tree falling in the forest, only now he took the side of the idiots who believed that the event was contingent upon one being there to hear it. For without the mind what’s really out there?

  Sensing a dull pain above his left eye, he took a deep breath. “Nothing seeing nothing,” he recalled himself saying, and for a brief moment he felt as though he
was about to lose his mind.

  How’d he ever start with this? Right, the idea that we can somehow get beyond the censorship of our thoughts.

  Miro attempted this through the use of primary colors and liquefied geometry, but the result was no less orchestrated.

  Looking down upon the artist’s cluttered constellations of drips and swirls, he couldn’t help but think that the world was nothing more than a self imposed hallucination, making the prospect for real understanding a fantasy. For how can we think our way out of our own minds?

  Not liking the direction in which he was heading, Jack rubbed his eyes. Was he becoming a Nihilist?

  Concluding with this particular group, the book displayed three white canvasses, the first of which was blank, except for three black dots. As to the others, they depicted several colors smeared next to one another and a piece of cloth from a denim jacket, but in the end they all had the same purpose, namely that there was no purpose. One of the artists in fact proudly stated that he didn’t know why he had created the painting in the first place, except to say that he wasn’t about to partake in any sort of bourgeois dialectic.

  What then, Jack wondered, became of the process, the dialogue, the search for truth that seemed to inform everything he had heretofore read? Even if we could never approach the ultimate building blocks of reality, assuming of course they even existed, there was still the world we live in, and if that wasn’t worthy of examination, what was?

  “Why even bother to mark up a canvass?” he reflected, yet as troublesome as he found the Nihilists, he couldn’t help but think that he was falling prey to them.

  “Of course there’s a tree,” he mumbled to himself. “All of this high brow stuff has got me confused.”

  Slamming the book closed, he tossed it onto the floor.

  How could he have lost his bearings like that? Was he really that flighty? Perhaps the professor was right.