A Cruel Season for Dying (17 page)

Darius stood too. He towered over her. “I’m sorry, Hanae, that I can’t do what you want.”

Again her head tilted, following his voice. The black almond eyes were laughing now. “Be selfish, Kenjin. Try to remember
what you want.”

Michael Darius entered the bedroom like a man visiting a grave. He walked slowly, approaching the bed, still perfectly made,
stopping paces from its padded edge. The thick mattress with its custom sheets and coverlet kept well beyond his reach. As
if the bed were a trap.

He stood very still, his glance going to the paintings, to the photograph his wife had abandoned with the other things on
the vanity. Allowing the memories to come. Aware of the scent that had
enveloped him from the moment he’d entered. The odor of civet and roses that still lingered.

He turned and walked out, closing the door behind him
for the last time.
Knowing as the vow was renewed that it would not be kept.

He went to the kitchen and fixed himself a sandwich, as if the routine of living were a cure that might someday take hold.
He took his plate to the living room and set it down on the table. The photographs still lay where he’d thrown them the night
of Jimmy’s visit.

He pushed the plate away and pulled the eight-by-tens toward him, laying the shots of the crime scenes like a game of solitaire,
placing the victim close-ups side by side. Three gay men, very similar in body type. Die-cut fodder for the killer’s sick
fantasy. The homosexual context seemed obvious, even glaring. So why didn’t he buy it? What made him so sure that the obvious
here was wrong?

As always when looking at dead bodies, thoughts of his sister could not be avoided. And the time away from police work had
taken away the blunted edge of routine. Elena’s murder, when he had been in high school, came back with renewed force. His
discovery of her body. The strangeness of the way his consciousness had split between horror and a numb objectivity. It was
the numbness that had remained. His only interest, the pursuit of justice for the man who had done it. A part-time yardman,
quickly apprehended, who had returned to rob, and only incidentally to rape and murder his sister.

Her killer’s conviction had brought some satisfaction. But inside, the numbness persisted. Emotion was a distant reflex, a
relic he could examine, even mimic, but not anything he could feel. That had changed for a while with Margot.

He returned his attention to Sakura’s victims, focusing on the symbol, dark against the hairless chests. The ash-drawn pattern
was tantalizing, somehow familiar. He stared at it, reaching for the memory that would make sense of the ragged design. He
closed his eyes, shutting out distraction, but the drifting fragments that played inside his head refused to coalesce.

Why was he doing this? He stood. And picking up the plate of food and the photographs, he returned to the kitchen. But it
was only the uneaten sandwich that made it into the trash.

The night sky was flat and opaque, the river air misty with reflected neon. Cold light and a colder wind. It shuffled off
the water, blowing away the traffic noise from the nearby tangle of approaches that fed the Brooklyn Bridge. It crawled against
his skin, chilling him despite the leather jacket. Michael Darius threw his cigarette down, crushing red sparks with his foot.
The butt was the third he had left in the alley.

The wind blew harder, pushing him farther into the darkness, the river smell mixing with fading smoke and the layered odors
of garbage. Always a little rot left behind. Seeds of deterioration planted in brick and concrete, breathed back day after
day.

It was long after eight when Sakura finally appeared, materializing through the fog that rose from the grillwork near the
curb.

He crossed the street, falling in step behind. “Jimmy …”

Sakura turned on his heel, his face a pale triangle floating in the fallout from the streetlamp.

“Damn it, Michael, where the hell did you come from?”

“Over there.” He threw a shoulder toward the black gap of the alley. “I took a chance on catching you.”

“You been waiting long?”

“Yeah.”

“I thought you’d stopped smoking.”

Darius snapped the lighter shut, thrust it back into the jacket, and exhaled. “I did,” he said.

Sakura made no comment. The logical question was why Michael was here. “Have you eaten?” he asked instead.

Darius shook his head.

Two in the
genkan.
Hanae listened. Two removing their shoes. Tonight was good. Like old times. She rose to her feet as they came into the room.

“I brought someone.” Jimmy’s happiness was in his voice.

“Welcome, Kenjin.” She smiled, fixed on his breathing, on the sound of Taiko’s wagging tail beating out its greeting.

“Where’s Willie?” Jimmy asked.

“Right here,” Willie answered for her, her rough-pleasant voice moving toward them out of the kitchen. “This is my third beer,
Sakura. You plan to starve me? Or just get me drunk?” She had stopped at Jimmy’s side. “Hi,” she said. The word directed at
Kenjin.

“Dr. Wilhelmina French”—Jimmy made the introduction— “Michael Darius…. Michael was my partner.”

Hanae listened. Kenjin was standing very still, the protectiveness he always wore pulled tightly about him. A cloak against
this stranger. “Dr. French,” he said.

“Willie was one of my instructors at Quantico,” Jimmy continued the introduction. “She led my group the last nine months when
we profiled actual cases.”

“Jimmy helped us track down a serial.”

“Please sit.” Hanae indicated the table. “The pot is hot and waiting. We don’t want Willie to starve.”

Shabu shabu
was a one-pot meal. Peasant fare. A meal to be shared among friends. Together she and Willie brought the small warm bottles
of sake from the kitchen, the platter of meat and vegetables to be cooked in the charcoal-heated pot that was placed at the
center of the table.

“Everything is wonderful, Hanae.” Willie spoke to her from across the table. “Especially the pickles.”

Jimmy laughed.

“What did I say?” Willie asked.

“You explain it to her, Michael,” Jimmy said to him. “I remember you said the same thing the first time you tasted Hanae’s
tsukemono.
”

She wondered for a moment if Kenjin would not answer. But he did. “In Japan a housewife who makes good pickles,” he said,
“is also supposed to be skilled in the art of making love.”

Willie made a noise. “So how can you tell that a
man
is a good lover?”

“All Japanese men are good lovers,” Jimmy said.

Even Kenjin laughed at that.

They had rejected the sofa and chairs in favor of cushions on the
tatami.
In a circle, cross-legged, Sakura, Darius, and Willie French now sat. An interloper might have assumed that meditation was
in order, but the posture was an illusion. They’d been discussing murder for almost an hour.

Sakura watched as Willie drew in her legs, resting her chin on her knees while she shifted the photographs of the four victims
into chronological order. The cumulative effect of the layout was so powerful it almost blunted the intellect.

“Killing by injection is rare,” she said, staring at the eight-by-tens. “Especially outside a hospital setting.”

“But the medical component is strong,” Sakura said.

“Possibly. He certainly knows what he’s doing with the potassium. And how to handle a scalpel.” She stood now and began pacing.
“Two weeks roughly between Westlake and Pinot,” she said. “Still Pinot feels more opportunistic than the other kills. Maybe
it’s the kid himself. A street hustler is different from an art gallery owner or a dancer in the Metropolitan Ballet. Makes
me wonder if he couldn’t hold back any longer. Exploded, grabbing at whatever he could get.” She stopped, looking down. “Yet
he’s still as organized as hell.”

“But don’t organized serials hide the bodies of their victims?” Darius asked.

“Usually,” she answered him.

“So maybe he wants you to see what he’s doing.” Darius intercepted her stare. “The murders seem staged.”

“Not staged, staging would be for us,” she said. “He’s posing the bodies. And the posing is for him. Whatever he’s doing,
he needs to do. It’s intrinsic to his fantasy.”

“And what fantasy is that, Dr. French?” Darius was still looking at her.

“His focus on homosexuals is primary, I think, and placing the victims’ hands over their genitalia is a strong message. Of
course, the wings are indicative, and the fact that he’s writing the names of angels on the walls …” She stopped and sat back
down on the cushion, aware perhaps that she hadn’t really answered his question.

Sakura reached into the manila envelope and pulled out the black-and-whites that showed wider shots of the murder scenes.
He pointed
to the ash-drawn letters scrawled over Carrera’s bed. “The names of
fallen
angels,” he added.

“The battle between good and evil.” Willie seemed grateful for his intercession. “The cosmic imagery fits with LSD use,” she
said. She glanced down at the photo he’d singled out. “Maybe he perceives homosexuals as
fallen
men.”

“And killing them is punishment?” Darius asked.

“I don’t think I’d call it punishment,” she said. “I’m still impressed by the lack of violence. I think
fallen
doesn’t translate as evil in the killer’s mind, but rather as disadvantaged in some way.”

“Something he’s got to fix,” Darius said.

“Yes.” Willie seemed pleased how Michael had finished off her hypothesis.

Darius nodded and rose.

Sakura collected the photographs, replacing them into the envelope, then stood too.

“Understanding the fantasy is paramount,” he said. “I have an appointment with Dr. Isaacs on Friday. He’s the Hebrew professor
who discovered that those words were the names of fallen angels. I want to see what else he has to say and get his copy of
this book
Enoch.
”

“Sounds like a plan.” Willie rose now to stand next to him. “Nice to have met you,” she said, extending her arm toward Darius.

They shook hands like adversaries, and Sakura was remembering uncomfortably all that he’d told Willie about his ex-partner
back at Quantico. He felt guilty again, as he had earlier tonight when making the introductions. Perhaps he’d given Willie
some kind of unfair advantage. But then, he had never expected the two of them to meet.