Even The Dead Will Bleed

by Steven Ramirez

  The place was not too far from where I lived. As I turned onto Alhambra Avenue I saw the flashing lights. Fire trucks, police cruisers and an ambulance were clustered around the entrance to an alley next to the coffee house. A crowd of gawking local Chinese and Latino residents hovered behind the yellow police tape. One middle-aged woman clung to a purple umbrella with flowers painted on it and looked like she was praying. Slowing down I turned at the corner and parked down on the street.

  “What’s going on?” I said, approaching the crowd.

  A local turned to me and shrugged. “No se.”

  A young woman joined the conversation. “Somebody got attacked.”

  She worked at Holy Grounds and had colorful floral tats up and down her arms, as well as a number of piercings. I think she went by the name Amparo. She was Latina—maybe Mexican—with cropped dark brown hair and eyes that resembled black pools. If you stared at them too long, you’d get sucked in. She couldn’t have been more than twenty.

  “Cut up real bad,” said another man with gold teeth, acne scars and grease under his fingernails. “Prob’ly a hooker, homes.” This guy was straight out of a Cheech and Chong movie.

  People like to make up stories when they don’t have all the facts. I wanted to investigate but made it a rule never to mix it up with cops. So I waited with the others.

  An ABC7 Eye Witness News van screeched to a stop across the street from us, nearly plowing into a parked car in the rain. The cameraman driver hopped out and pulled open one of the side doors to grab his equipment. A young Latina wearing a black suit and carrying a small umbrella hopped out of the cab, brushed her long, dark hair away from her face and crossed the street, her black platform pumps clickety-clacking on the slick pavement. She looked to be in her early twenties—pretty with straight coffee-colored hair, hazel eyes and full, sensuous lips. I wondered if she would be as aggressive as my late reporter friend Evie Champagne had been—before someone shot her in the back of the head for asking too many questions.

  “Mari Lopez!” some woman said.

  Excitement spread quickly. Ignoring the attention, the serious-minded young woman marched up to the cop in charge and asked him something as her cameraman trailed behind her. Leering at her chest, he shook his head and pointed to the police tape. I got the impression that they’d done this Kabuki dance before. Rolling her eyes, she turned and joined us, choosing to stand next to me for some reason. I could smell her lavender perfume that mixed with the rain.

  “Can I have your autograph?” a young boy said.

  The reporter glanced at him impatiently.

  “Don’t forget where you come from,” an elderly woman said.

  Smiling professionally the reporter grabbed a black Sharpie from her purse and signed the boy’s Dodgers cap, sending him over the moon.

  As others began to pester the reporter, a stunned silence fell over the onlookers like a cloak of liquid darkness as two stone-faced EMTs raced a gurney towards the ambulance—one pushing the gurney and the other holding an IV bag. The police tightened their circle and waved people back. The reporter nudged her partner, who raised his camera and began recording. Others around him brought out their cell phones and did the same. There was no way this wasn’t ending up on YouTube.

  Instinctively, I pulled my cap down low over my eyes and turned up my collar. I thought the event might be nothing more than a random shooting like hundreds that happened in cities around the country every year. That’s what I thought.

  Then I saw the victim.

  She was strapped to the gurney—an overweight girl with poofy hair, bad teeth and too much makeup—moaning and writhing feverishly. That other guy had been right—she was a hooker. A grey patient blanket covered most of her torso. I squeezed in to get a closer look.

  Wailing, the woman, who looked to be in her mid-twenties, managed to free one of her arms. As she raised it towards her face, she shrieked. Then the crowd screamed. Someone on the other side of me passed out. Gasping, the old woman made the Sign of the Cross and covered the boy’s eyes. The gangbanger went white and vomited on his shoes as people moved away from him. All the while, the cameraman calmly recorded the scene, even though they would never be allowed to broadcast the horrific images.

  The victim’s arm had been stripped clean of skin and flesh—the naked bone and blood vessels still intact. A bright orange tourniquet stopped the blood from squirting everywhere. When I saw that, I knew what the angel was trying to tell me.

  Cutters—they’d been here.

  As I looked past the ambulance, a black Escalade slowly cruised by. One of the grey-suited agents in the back seat was shooting rapid-fire photos using a camera equipped with a telephoto lens. I noticed another man sitting next to him—gaunt with close-cropped silver hair and wearing a black suit. A long, shiny purplish scar ran from his temple, down past his eye to his jawline. That eye—it reminded me of the old man’s “eye of a vulture” from Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart.” Pale blue, with a film over it. He looked like a deformed undertaker. When he turned to look at the crowd I almost lost my gorge as I struggled to slip farther back.

  I had seen him before.

  One of the EMTs grabbed the woman’s arm and placed it back under the blanket. Then he and his partner loaded the gurney into the ambulance and they were off, siren blaring. The cop in charge signaled for the reporter to step forward, the way a maître d’ summons a busboy.

  She and her cameraman scooted under the police tape and approached him. They chatted amiably for a few seconds as the cameraman lined up the shot. Then the cop stepped out of the way and Los Angeles Police Chief Lawrence Hughes came forward. I recognized him from the news. He was in his fifties with salt-and-pepper hair and a professional tan. He wore a suit and, despite the rain, his appearance was elegant.

  A bright light mounted on the camera came on and the reporter did her standup, minus the umbrella. Both she and the police chief had on their game faces. The interview went quickly, the chief refusing to commit himself to anything—especially the reporter’s suggestion that the attack might have been the work of a serial killer. Following the standard playbook—looking directly into the camera and smiling through whitened teeth—he assured the public that this was a random act and that the neighborhood was safe.

  What a crock. This was only the beginning. The bloodbath had just begun. I listened carefully as the reporter peppered the cop with questions, trying to glean whether this type of crime had ever happened before. It was denial all the way—the same words repeated over and over. Random act. The cop might as well have blamed the incident on flying monkeys. There was nothing more to be learned till the evening news and tomorrow’s newspapers.

  After doing her wrap-up, the reporter returned to the van with her cameraman, and several of us entered the coffee house, some returning to drinks and food they’d already bought but were too upset to consume. Amparo slipped behind the counter and began taking new orders. I purchased my coffee and found a seat away from the windows.

  Thoughts and images flew through my brain. The victim’s face and arm. The black Escalade. The grey-suit taking pictures. And that hideous man in black. He worried me. I’d seen him in Mt. Shasta when we raided the secret Robbin-Sear lab. He’d been standing in the parking lot talking to Walt Freeman as I made my escape in a stolen Escalade. Who the hell was he?

  And now the cutters were here. I recalled the first ones I’d encountered in Tres Marias. Ordinary Black Dragon soldiers with eyes that glowed purple, calmly chewing the raw flesh of a man they’d flayed using their bayonets. Whatever organization had been behind the massacre in my town had moved the show to LA. How far would the plague spread this time? And why had the police chief himself shown up if this was nothing more than a “random act”? The whole thing reeked.

  I had come here to expose the evil that had killed Holly and destroyed my life. Maybe I was too late. Walt Freeman was the current face of that evil, and though killing him would have gone a long way t
owards sating the hatred and need for revenge I carried with me constantly, the act itself would do little to stop what was already underway. It was like pissing in the wind. Usually, you were the only one who got wet. Nevertheless, ending Walt’s life was what I was prepared to do.

  A couple of minutes had gone by. I looked down to see that I hadn’t touched my Ojo Rojo. I took a long swallow and noticed that the music track playing in the background was “When You Were Young” by The Killers. Though I was in my twenties I didn’t feel young.

  The reporter walked in alone and strode over to the counter. As she waited for Amparo to make her drink, she asked a lot of questions—presumably about the female victim. Amparo didn’t know anything—or pretended not to. A minute later she said, “Cafe de Olla” and handed the reporter her coffee in a to-go cup. Sipping her drink, the polished young woman began scanning the room, probably looking for other rubes to interview.

  I didn’t look away fast enough and, her hazel eyes settling on me, she started towards my table. I would have gotten up and walked out, but that would have looked suspicious. Then a break. The guy with the gold teeth stepped into her path, his shirt covered in dried sick, babbling about how he’d known the victim and could tell the reporter “all kinds o’ shit.”

  “Not now, Shorty,” the reporter said as she tried to move past him.

  “Pues, come on, Mari. Don’t you want no tips?”

  It looked to me like these two went way back. She rolled her eyes as he continued to regale her with bragging and lame half-truths and putting in a plug for the car repair shop where he worked, in case the camera was still rolling. Meanwhile, I slipped silently out the door.

  It was pouring as I headed back to my truck, my stomach aching. Though I’d been preparing myself for this day, I was scared—not of dying but of failing. My legs stiffened and I wanted to vomit. I hated that fear could get in the way of my determination to avenge my wife’s death and I forced myself to walk even faster.

  I noticed that the news van was gone. The now familiar clickety-clacking of heels behind me made me stop and turn around. It was that damned reporter. She must have extricated herself from the Shorty show and followed me. Warily, I watched as she skittered towards me, her hair flat and dripping, her clothes drenched. All I wanted was to get to my truck and make my appointment, but it was hopeless. Better to let this play out. So I waited.

  The sidewalk was slick with rain. She slipped and went down awkwardly on one knee. “Shit!”

  It was hard not to laugh—she resembled a show dog who’d gotten caught in a car wash. Her knee was bleeding and she looked like she was about to lose it. Though I had sympathy for her, I had no intention of becoming part of her story. Still, she needed help.

  Without speaking I walked over and offered her my hand. I noticed a small gold crucifix beaded with raindrops hanging around her neck—like the one I’d buried Holly in. I wondered if God was doing this on purpose. I almost laughed but stopped myself so this girl wouldn’t think I was a lunatic.

  Looking up at me, her mascara trickling down her face in black, wavy streaks—like Carrie—she took my hand and got to her feet, grunting.

  “You should probably clean that,” I said.

  She stared at her knee, which was already starting to swell. “Son of a . . .” Then she dug through her purse, pulled out a few tissues and pressed them to the wound. “Thanks for the advice,” she said.

  “So, you’re Mari Lopez?”

  “That’s my on-camera name. My friends get to call me Maritza.”

  She was pretty—even without perfect makeup. Her eyes looked sincere. I told myself to be careful. She looked like she was waiting for me to tell her my name. I stood there, the rain coming down, keeping my expression neutral.

  “Do you live around here?” she said.

  “No. But I like the coffee.”

  “Me too. I grew up in East Los not too far from here.”

  “Yeah, I kind of gathered that. The old woman in the crowd. And Shorty.”

  She laughed. “They watched me grow up. Guess they feel they know me.”

  Though we were both getting drenched, the conversation moved naturally. I wanted to like her but the truth was, she was only there for the story. Better not to get involved. She was shorter than me—even in heels—and had to look up a lot. Now she was gazing into my eyes in a way that made me feel uncomfortable.

  “What?” I said.

  “Sorry. It’s a game I used to play with my sisters when we were little. My father told me, if you look hard enough into a person’s eyes, you can see their soul.”

  “Does that ever work?”

  “No. I knew it was a crock, but for some reason I still do it sometimes. Guess it reminds me of my dad. You have nice eyes, by the way.”

  “Thanks. Is your father . . .”

  “He passed a few years ago. Cancer. He was a real hard-ass when we were growing up. Very protective of his girls. But he could really be sweet too. I miss him so much.”

  “Seriously” I said. “You should clean that scrape or it’ll get infected. I’ll walk you back to the coffee house. Maybe they have a first aid kit.” She hesitated. “Shorty’s probably gone by now.”

  She laughed and we started walking. When we were halfway there she said, “You never told me your name.”

  I knew I’d regret it but I did it anyway. “Dave.”

  “Nice to meet you, David,” she said, extending her hand.

  “Just Dave.”

  “You seem nice. For a white guy.” She laughed—accidentally snorting—and covered her mouth in embarrassment.

  “Nice,” I said and opened the door for her.

  “You okay?” I said as Amparo placed a large bandage on Maritza’s knee and closed the first aid kit.

  We were sitting in the back room at a wobbly card table. The area was stacked with boxes of coffee beans, cups and other supplies. The back door was open and rain came down steadily. Though the pleasant aroma of coffee was strong, I was anxious to get out of there.

  “Yeah,” she said.

  “What happened to the van?”

  “I sent Rick back to the station with the video.”

  “There’s no way they’re broadcasting that, right?”

  “It’ll be heavily edited.” She touched my hand. “Can you give me a ride?”

  I rubbed the back of my neck and, not looking directly at her, said, “I really need to be somewhere.”

  “Hey, come on. You owe me.”

  “How do you figure that?”

  “I spilled blood for you,” she said, pointing at her knee. “We’re in a pact now.”

  “Am I getting shanked here?”

  Getting up, I turned to Amparo for help. She smiled wisely and said, “Ni modo,” which meant “whatever.” In other words, I should accept it.

  We were both soaked as we walked back to my truck. At least the rain had let up. Once we were on the road Maritza gave me directions to the television studio in Hollywood. I kept wondering why she was so adamant about talking to me and waited to see what she would do.

  Maritza was smart. Instead of interrogating me, she played the long game—worked on gaining my trust. Not that it would do her any good. I knew exactly what she was doing and let it happen. I had nothing to lose—she didn’t know anything about me. And there was a good chance that after today I would cease to exist. So maybe I’d leave her with a couple of nice memories.

  “Why do you think the police chief showed up?” I said. We were driving west through Echo Park, passing the lake.

  “Right?” she said. “That really surprised me. But then what happened to that woman surprised me too. It wasn’t the first time, you know.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Two weeks ago they found another body in the LA River. It had been picked clean. All that was left was a skeleton with the head intact. The cops attributed it to a satanic cult.”

  “Or a random act,” I said.

  She
laughed. “Oh, yeah. Random as it gets.” She became serious. “I don’t think these events were random. In fact, I believe they’re connected.” She was testing me.

  “How?”

  “Whoever did this, they took their time. There was a lot of precision.”

  “Serial killer?”

  “Killers.”

  “You think there might be more than one?”

  “They work fast and don’t leave any evidence—other than the bodies. I’ve read the coroner’s reports. The angle and variety of the cuts suggest more than one weapon.”

  “Maybe it’s one guy and he’s ambidextrous.”

  “I’m serious, David. My gut tells me there’s more than one.”

  “Why did you come to me?” We’d passed through Silver Lake and were now in the hills, cruising through the residential streets overlooking Hollywood.

  “Because I could tell you didn’t belong.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “When I work a story, I try to eliminate the obvious and concentrate on the anomaly—the thing that doesn’t fit. It pays off more than you’d think.”

  “You sound like you were born for this.”

  “I can’t take credit,” she said, smiling shyly. “I had a mentor. Karen Rothberg. She never got the opportunity to work on camera but she was a helluva researcher. She taught me everything I know.”

  “What, did she suffer from stage fright?”

  “She has a withered hand, so the camera didn’t exactly love her.”

  “What about Bob Dole?”

  “The senator? His hand was paralyzed and he kept a pen in it. Karen was fine with her situation, though. She knew what her strengths were.”

  “You’re pretty young to be doing this.”

  “Well, Karen wasn’t just smart—she was influential. She convinced the execs to give me a shot. I owe her so much.”

  “Sounds like a nice lady. Is she still around?”

  “Retired. Moved to Santa Barbara.”

  “So wait, you said I don’t fit.”

  “No. And I think you know something about these attacks. Seeing that poor woman on the gurney did nothing to you. Yet you reacted when the black Escalade passed us.”