“Uh—yes, ma’am.”
“Anyway, on top of all that I told you, your mother has been getting weirdly close to me since you left. Permission to tell her to suck eggs?”
“Granted.”
“Thank you.”
“Anyway, I—wait, are you at the station?” I hear the faulty printer working itself into a panic in the background—an unmistakable sound. It only works some of the time, and even then, without any discernable pattern other than an inverse relationship with how badly you need it to work.
“Yeah. Some dickhead went around keying cars, so I’m watching nine billion hours of surveillance footage and printing stills of anyone who looks suspicious.”
“How do they look suspicious?”
“According to the captain, not white.”
“Sounds like him,” I say.
“Indeed. Anyway. You have a murder to solve, so quit fuckin’ around and get on it. And tell Todd I say hi.”
“Will do.”
“Love ya. Bye.”
And the connection is severed, leaving me with nothing but reality.
I dial the station, this time, tempting as it is to call Beth again. I give them Harvey’s name and ask if they have an address for him. They don’t.
That’s strike three, in my eyes; Phoenix is a bust. I go back inside the motel, this time not quite appreciating its cool quality as much as I know I should.
“Let’s get out of here,” I say to Todd.
“Oh thank god,” he says before the door squeals shut behind me. We’re ready to go in mere minutes, due partially to our mistrust of the surfaces here being too great to feel comfortable unpacking things like toothbrushes and underwear.
“You’re good to drive for at least the first while, right?” asks Todd. He knows I’m capable of staying awake for inhuman lengths of time, but he asks as a courtesy.
“Yeah. Get some sleep. I’ll bug ya if I need a break.”
“Bug me too much and you won’t get one.”
“Planning another hospital visit, are we?”
We laugh; mutual teasing is the kind of banter we both love. As often as not, the comic relief is a necessary reprieve from whatever else is going on at the time anyway. I gas us up at a 7-Eleven before we hit the road, and Todd is already asleep by the time I get back in the car, despite having had to cut the engine and, thus, the AC. His hair is already succumbing to the sweltering heat, though, draped down like a flattened black rat laid to rest atop my boyfriend’s skull.
As we get onto the highway, heading east, the last of twilight has abandoned us and true night sets in, the crusty desert on either side of the highway cast into an inky mass of shadow, daring onlookers to see its form but changing shape before one’s eyes.
I’ve always considered darkness to be my most natural habitat, if anything can be considered my natural habitat. As such, it was quite a transition for me to move from a normally overcast town in Oregon to a perpetually sun-seared clump of a town, where the sun blazes in through every window from dawn to dusk. Aside from when the thunderstorms rage, that is.
The nice part about it, however, is that the scorching temperatures during the day leave the earth comfortably and pleasantly warm after sundown, similar to the difference between being toasty warm in a blanket and being smothered by one.
I cruise down the highway, pushing eighty miles per hour for the most part. The road beneath us cuts through the dirt and sage like a giant eraser swiped along this path, exposing a two-lane blacktop that had been lying in wait underneath the dusty surface.
Every now and then, we pass an eerily humanlike cactus on the shoulder. But I don’t mind; after all, the night is my bitch. My domain. If this is to turn into a turf war, I have home court advantage. So I embrace the humanoid figures zipping past us left and right, daring one to move.
I’m reminded of the Native American legends of the Skinwalkers, old shaman with druidic shapeshifting abilities, gained from forbidden magic.
While I don’t believe in any of that, part of my mind—the part that allows me to be enthralled by the fantasy genre—yearns to play host to these ideas with eager desperation. This is an activity I only allow with the stipulation that that bit of my mind recognizes it for imaginary fun.
Our journey presses onward, plunging us deeper and deeper into the darkness. Todd’s nose begins to whistle slightly as he sleeps on.
I breathe a deep, purposeful sigh. The beauty of the night is drastically underappreciated. Perhaps if it only came once per week, or month, or year, it would be better acknowledged, like how a celebrity’s work becomes an abrupt, instant classic if he or she bites the bullet.
As it is, I enjoy being virtually alone in my affinity for the hours of starlight. At the risk of sounding like a stereotypical Oregon hipster, having too many people out there to appreciate the night would, to a degree at least, rob it of its majesty. Part of the night’s magic is the sheer nakedness of it, going about its business without the vestments of human activity.
Humans have a habit of treating the earth as the stage for their own life performances. Because of this, we often overlook that the earth has a show of its own to put on, and couldn’t care less about your bus making you late for work. No, the earth (though she’ll never admit it herself) is a diva, only taking note of your show when it interferes with hers. But my god, what a show it is.
She starts the evening performance with a light show, explosive rays of orange and red and yellow and pink and purple, sending off the blue curtains of the afternoon sky with a bang. She shows us crickets, cicadas, fireflies, toads, a musical ensemble simple and stunning. The stars move in—though not to out-star her, of course—and dot the sky, more and more with every second, the longer you look, the more you find, some of them twinkling—though those are actually planets—until they join in constellations, the Big Dipper, reliable and recognizable, Scorpio, timid yet formidable, Orion—ah, Orion.
Orion is a winter constellation, and as we are seven weeks into summer, Orion is presently being enjoyed by another part of the solar system.
For whatever reason—familiarity, some level of association with roots deep in my id, Orion has always brought me comfort. Of course, on his last trip around, he saw me slaughter my father, try and fail to frame another detective for it, and scramble for my life while forging the two strongest relationships I’ve ever had; stronger than I’d ever imagined I could have.
A wave of sentimentality washes over me to the tune of homesickness. Sure, last autumn was scary as shit. Receiving death threats, even though nobody had been told that I’d moved in with Todd (aside from my mother, who found out from Beth—she apologized later) was deeply unsettling. I miss Riverdell and its familiarity and its gloom.
As if to remind me that my attention had wandered from her spectacle, the sky delivers a litter of shooting stars, bursting through the night canvas from north to south. I don’t make a wish; even if I were a subscriber to the superstition, my mind is a pile of mush right now, all but incapable of a concrete desire beyond getting home—whether that means Riverdell or Wometzia, I’m not sure—and having a hot shower and going to bed.
Hours pass, and overhead, stars begin to fade, giving way to the incoming light from the east, signaling Her Majesty’s grand finale, in which the tricky sun makes a dramatic return from its repose, exploding into nearly as many colors as the opening scene.
And daylight is upon us.
Todd stirs when the first actual rays of sunlight land upon his face, then he wakes. He rubs his eyes, his face crumpled in the cute way that only so many people can do. He blinks himself into our world, retrieving whatever pats of his brain tried to remain AWOL and unconscious, and says, “Morning.”
“Morning,” I say, unsure whether he’s uttering a morning salutation or a question. Either way, my reply works.
Todd sits upright, stretches, and digs into his half-eaten pouch of beef jerky, forcing a generous handful into his mouth. He washes it dow
n with a swig of water, then pulls my briefcase out of the back seat. My case files shift eagerly within it.
“Mind if I look at this?” he asks.
“Go for it,” I say; procedure be damned, if breaking it will get this thing solved.
Todd extracts the thick manila folder (Jesus) and starts flipping through the files within.
“The hell … oh my god … what the fuck?” I can almost follow along in my head.
He closes the folder, thinks for a minute, and opens it again.
“Were these photos taken with two different cameras?” he asks.
“I have no idea. Why?”
“Some of the images are flipped.”
“Wait, what? Really?”
“Yeah. In this one, the one with the full headstone in view, it’s oriented correctly. But the ones with the swastika are reversed. You can tell because it catches a part of the headstone and the lettering is backwards.”
“Oh shit.”
There it is. The missed exit.
An oft-overlooked fact is that the Nazi swastika is a bastardization, a gross perversion of a Eurasian symbol that once stood for continuity of life and purity. It was adopted by Native Americans as a whirling log, symbolic of life and its perpetuity.
When Hitler purloined the symbol and branded it with a sickening context for eternity, the symbol saw a drop in usage, for, while the orientation was different, many of the goods with the mark were rugs or baskets, which would then bear the Nazi swastika when viewed from the wrong side.
Now that I know that the images have been flipped, the investigation takes on an entirely new direction. Unless, of course, the killer simply wasn’t seasoned enough in his racism to get it right. I don’t rule it out, but it seems unlikely now; a man (or woman, I suppose) with the nerve to hollow out an eleven-year-old would probably know his (or her) swastikas.
But in the event of someone marking the scene with the ‘life’ symbol, what would that mean? It may be that the killing was even more ritualistic than we’d thought. Was this to be some kind of sacrifice? If so, by whom? And to whom? And for what?
“Jesus,” I say, the thoughts coalescing all at once and slamming into me with the force of a freight train fueled by Red Bull.
“What’s up?” says Todd. We can often discern each other’s thoughts, but there’s no way he’ll intuit this one. So I share my thoughts with him.
“What the … So, this is not the vengeful killing you originally thought it might be. At least, not exclusively.”
“Right.” The word rings in my head: Sacrifice.
“What the hell? It sounds like some detracted Pagan ritual or something.”
“Yeah. I don’t know.” Sacrifice.
That point leaves Todd and me bewildered. Neither his brain, working itself out of a morning fog, nor my brain, working itself into one, can find a distinct direction in which to pursue this. Sure, it’s a lead, but an entry hub with ten trailheads doesn’t offer much in the way of directness. I need an arrow, a sign, a small stack of pebbles—hell, I’d settle for a trail of bread crumbs. I’m already headed into a giant oven, anyway.
By the time the sun rises over the mountains that cradle Albuquerque to the south, we’re almost to them, and another forty-five minutes puts us in our carport, our cottage showing no sign of having missed us at all.
Odin sure does, though. My German shepherd leaps into my arms and licks my face. I pet him and play with him for a minute before the weight of my exhaustion settles on my head, my spine.
“You going to get some sleep?” Todd asks.
“No, I don’t think so,” I say. As much as I would love to curl up in a ball in my bed, be little spoon, and sleep well into the afternoon, the day calls to me like the night used to, taunting me with its mysteries and unknowns, the colors and shapes of the missing pieces of the puzzle. I must unveil them and place them in their proper locations.
But first, I must wash off the stink of traveling and shitty motels. So to the shower I go.
The shower has always been my best thinking place. With the light of the bathroom, the sound of water falling and splashing around me, the robust smells of shampoo and body wash, and the sensation of the hot cascade hitting and running down my body, my senses become occupied enough to allow my mind to focus more singularly on a target, a sort of concentration therapy via sensory overload.
I imagine my consciousness as a boat, a small one, without oars, sails, a rudder, or even a long pole as might be employed on a gondola in a tour of the Venetian canals. It flows down a stream with many twists and sharp curves, through a dark cave. A dim green glow lights the walls, but little else. The boat follows the flow of the stream seamlessly, always in its exact center, never threatening to stray and collide with the cave wall.
The vessel picks up speed, but still holds true to its route. The boat has a destination in its own mind, but refuses to share with me in the form of arrival or simple manifestation. Oh yes, my subconscious is cooking something up, but a chef does not present the patron, no matter how hungry, with an unfinished meal; I must wait for this particular revelation, unless it’s knocked loose by some other part of my investigation.
“Remy!” Todd calls me out of my trance, and I’m back to feeling my feet on the shower floor.
“Remy, your phone has been ringing for like ten minutes. It’s Husk.”
“Ah shit,” I say. Urgent calls from a superior in this line of work are almost never good.
Without drying or dressing properly, I wipe my hand on the royal-blue towel hanging on the rack, open the bathroom door, and take the phone from Todd’s outstretched hand. The line is active.
“Thorn,” says Husk. “About damn time.”
“Sorry, sir—I was in the shower.
“Yeah, whatever. Listen, what progress have you made on the Pacheco case?”
“Just a bit, but I may be on the verge of a breakthrough,” I say.
“Well, get on it. There’s been another murder, and there’s no way they’re not linked.”
“Oh fuck,” I say.
Husk chuffs out a noise that’s half scoff, half grim chortle. “Oh fuck is right,” he says.
I don’t want to ask, but I have to: “Who was it?”
“Anthony Koster. One of Pacheco’s friends.”
“Sweet Jesus,” I say.
“Son, the good Lord gave you that tongue, and if you keep usin’ it that way, he may just take it back.”
“Uh, yes sir.”
“I’m messing with you. Come to the station a-sap and I’ll fill you in.”
“Be there soon.”
When I arrive at the station, Husk intercepts me before I get to my desk and steers me toward his office, instead plopping me into a seat squashier than the one at my desk.
“This one’s a doozy,” says Husk.
“Pacheco wasn’t?”
“Oh, he definitely was. Still is. And Koster is equally so. But the two of them, together … it’s a nightmare.”
“What’re we looking at?”
“The exact same thing.”
“As Firenze? How exact?”
“So far as we can tell, it’s not a copycat who’s done it. Certain things about the kills are identical to a point. Uncanny, even, stuff that wasn’t even in the police reports.”
“Such as?”
“The particular way that the intestines were coiled. You can see a good amount on the surface, from the photographs, but when they started to clean it up, they found that the other end was set in a way that made it look sort of like an infinity symbol.”
“Anything else?”
“Well, everything. I’d swear it was déjà vu if I couldn’t see the poor kid’s face.”
Without warning, I’m reminded of Ellen Dodge, the girl whose murder had catalyzed a dangerous, retributive change in me—one that I wielded to bring an end to my father.
Prison would have been too good for him.
With tremendous effort, I pull my
mind away from gory photographs and red-hot rage, and lasso it into the air-conditioned confines of Wometzia Station.
I wonder about the course of Koster’s day. It occurs to me that I never knew whether or not he had been home when I was there yesterday. His sister deflected the question, instead insisting that her mother be present.
Husk hands me another manila folder. Though it weighs less, it’s as heavy as Firenze’s file, bearing the mark of the tragic, premature end of a child’s life.
Husk isn’t kidding; the file is nearly identical to that of Firenze. Except that this time, we don’t have a week’s worth of state police work that piled up while they scrambled to ID the victim. This time, they took one look at the scene and knew whom to call.
Helpfully, we do our forensics work out of Albuquerque. At least, blood spatter, fingerprints, and DNA. Being that the scene was in an Albuquerque cemetery, they were able to begin the forensics right away, analyzing blood spatter and fingerprints before our squad cars, driven by Officers Kent and Simpson, could even have arrived.
Officer Kent is a hard-working woman, a fireball with the work ethic of a monk. She definitely has the skills to be a detective, and the only reason she’s not the one holding this folder right now instead of me is that she needs to focus on her home so much; she’s a single mother of two. Her boyfriend left her the minute he found out she was pregnant with what turned out to be a set of twins; a boy and a girl. To add to that, she adopted her niece and nephew after their mother, her sister, drove out west and hurled herself into the Colorado. The kids’ father, apparently already having been borderline alcoholic, then crossed that threshold with rapid enthusiasm, and care of the kids dropped solemnly from the to-do list.
This was four years ago, and somehow she manages to rise and meet the world head-on every day. She doesn’t talk about these issues, either, as far as I’ve seen; I only know about them because her partner, Officer Simpson, is a huge gossip.
I made the mistake, once, of asking him an open-ended question. I don’t recall the question, specifically, but the resulting answer took me for a ride for which I was entirely unprepared, ranging from childhood to politics to love life (or rather, incessant complaints of lack thereof) to oddly specific questions about sex in general. All this followed by an energetic demonstration of how a man should present himself, garnished with anecdotes from his past that zipped from Point A to Point D with no hint of B or C.
Roadrunner Page 6