Bed of Nails (17 page)

“Is that a fact?”

“Look it up.”

“Were you on the ghost tour?”

“I was. Along with a busload of other conventioneers.”

“Did you stop outside Ted Bundy’s house?”

“We did.”

“And heard about the severed heads on the mantel?”

“That’s bullshit, by the way.”

“How do you know?”

“I’ve read several books about the Bundy case.”

“An interest of yours?”

“Come on. I write psycho-thrillers. My plot ideas come by my delving into real-life murders.”

“So I hear.”

“Okay, I’ll read your mind. We both know I spent time in a psych ward. A year and a half ago, an exec from L.A. was found dead in North Vancouver. Hanging upside down like the Hanged Man. A ring of nails around his head like a crown of thorns. I just published a psycho-thriller—
Crown of Thorns
—about that case, and while I’m in Seattle as guest of honor at a horror con, a similar crime occurs. A severed head ringed with nails is staked outside Ted Bundy’s house after I am on a bus tour that drives by. The headless body—strung up like the Hanged Man—is found miles away in a long-forgotten graveyard, and directions on how to locate the Thirteen Steps are in the con’s program.”

“Well?”

“Coincidence.”

“That’s improbable.”

“Why? Because I wrote a book? So did your murdered girlfriend.
Deadman’s Island.
Which I read.”

“Did you meet the Ripper on Colony Farm?”

“I did.”

“And referred him to Wes Grimmer?”

“That fucking asshole.”

“Is that a yes?”

Lister nodded. “And look what that self-centered, grandstanding prick is out to do to me. It boils my blood to think I made that egotistical backstabber.”

“You were partners?”

“Not anymore. If you’re looking for a killer, take a look at him.”

“Why?”

“One, he’s the Ripper’s lawyer. Two, he also wrote a novel about the Hanged Man case. Three, he’s in Seattle at this convention too. And four, I have an alibi for Friday night.”

“Doing what?”

“Fucking.”

“From dusk till dawn?”

“Isn’t that how you do it?”

“What’s her name?”

“A gentleman doesn’t tell.”

“Then where’s the problem, Bret?”

The lawyer-turned-novelist held up his book and tapped it against his chest.

“Petra Zydecker?”

“Wow, what a detective! You’d think that answer was staring you in the face.”

“Backup proof?”

“Sorry, no voyeurs. But we did call room service twice.”

“To your room?”

“Hers.”

“Remember what times?”

“Two. Four. Around there. Check with the hotel. I’m a big tipper. The waiters will remember.”

“Where’s Petra now?”

“Out front. At the tarot table. She was just sitting down as I came in.”

With a Reuben sandwich in one hand and a Pepsi in the other, the Cthulhu Mythos sculptor returned to his monsters. A thin, sleek, reptilian man with the fragile fingers necessary to create such exquisite details, he wore black slacks and a blood-red shirt with a hand-painted illustration of the tentacle face.

“How much?” Bret asked, touching Cthulhu.

“A thousand bucks.”

“U.S.?”

“Is there any other currency?”

“I’m Canadian,” Bret said.

“Life sucks, my friend.”

“I’ll take it.”

“Catch you later,” said Zinc.

“You wish, Dudley.”

And as the Mountie walked away, Bret called after him, “Want to bet Wes doesn’t have an alibi?”

“Want to know the future?”

“I’m afraid of what you’ll see.”

“The Magick is in the cards. The Tarot doesn’t lie.”

“If your cards are an indication, the future’s a bloody mess.”

“So’s the past. And the present. What’s your point?”

“The refuge of an optimist is to remain willfully blind.”

“Are you an optimist?”

“No.”

“Then pick a card.”

“Will this do?” Zinc asked, flashing his badge.

The goth queen was seated on her throne at the gateway to the Morbid Maze. Earlier, while Zinc’s attention was focused on
The Antichrist,
her image for the Hanged Man card in her personal tarot deck, she had slipped away into the labyrinth of paintings behind this display, and the Mountie had followed her through the maze without catching up. Only now did he grasp why Yvette had said, “I wondered how long it would take you to notice Petra.” Having gathered up the tarot cards from the stool in front of her throne, the goth queen shuffled them from hand to hand as Zinc got an eyeful of what it would be like to live life beyond the pale.

“Vamp” was the catchword for this creature. Vamp as in vampire, and seductress. Her eyes smoldered in a pale-skinned face that could use the blush of a blood transfusion. Her black hair was parted down the middle and curved around her cheekbones like pincer claws. A black bustier laced down the middle flaunted her cleavage in its scoop-necked top and the one-inch-wide bare strip that plunged to her navel. The black miniskirt clinging to her curvy hips was about as short as a skirt can get. Her ankle-high boots were those of a punk, and tattoos littered her arms. Her lips were black, her nails were black, and the only detail that seemed out of whack was the choker of dainty pearls around her neck—until the Mountie realized the “pearls” were a string of baby’s teeth.

Bret Lister, he thought, you’re one brave man.

“Am I under suspicion?”

“Should you be?”

Petra flicked a wayward hand toward
The Antichrist.

“That’s a powerful image.”

“It’s my Hanged Man. It captures all the conventions necessary for that card.”

“Why so gruesome?”

“That’s fitting, don’t you think? The Hanged Man is card twelve in the Tarot. Death follows. As card thirteen.”

“When did you paint it?”

“A year or so ago.”

“Under what inspiration?”

“You ought to know, Inspector. You were the main investigator in the case.”

Petra crossed her legs and sat back on her throne. She was playing with him like a cat plays with a mouse.

“You’re being watched.”

“I am?” said Zinc.

The vamp peered over his shoulder.

Zinc turned, and there was Yvette, sitting at her table out in the hall, elbow on its surface and chin in the palm of her hand, gazing in through the doors of the gallery.

“She seems your type.”

“What’s that?”

“Missionary position.”

“That’s catty.”

“No, that’s a fact. Yvette and I met at Bible camp when we were little girls. I doubt she remembers, but I do. It seems Miss Yvette has a crush on you.”

“What about Bret Lister?”

“What about him?”

The vamp uncrossed her legs. Zinc concentrated on her words, not her body language.

“You know Bret?”

“Sure. He was my lawyer.”

“For what?”

“An obscenity beef.”

“A rare charge these days.”

“It was a private prosecution. Some religious kooks didn’t like my art.”

“Where was that?”

“Chilliwack.”

“Do you live in B.C.?”

“Up the Fraser Valley. In the Bible Belt.”

“What riled them?”

“I wasn’t the instigator. A local minister was.”

“Why?”

“He thought I was the Devil’s spawn.”

“Why?”

“The minister was my dad.”

A portrait of Petra’s psychology came into focus in the Mountie’s mind. Christian fundamentalists embrace an uncompromising doctrine of the perfect nuclear family in a caring, nonviolent society with a puritan’s repugnance of sex. Created in God’s image, the human body is a temple to Him that must not be defiled. The Gothic rebellion is the antithesis of that. Just as the Goths—barbarian invaders from Scandinavia and eastern Europe—sacked Christian Rome in
AD
410 to usher in the Dark Ages, so current goths seek to undermine the stranglehold of enlightenment on the here and now.

In art, accessories, atmosphere, books, music, movies, and clothes, theirs is a realm of darkness where anything goes. Humankind needs fear and passion to feel alive, so goths turn anguish into delight. Their love of plunder, thirst for revenge, and lust for domination puts the scare of hell into the meek, who shan’t inherit the earth. Paranoia, goths believe, is the sane response to a chaotic world, where there is constant risk and nothing is protected. Decay is an obsession, graffiti an art. Immorality defies and subverts authority. To be trapped inside unchanging flesh is to live life in chains. Through piercings, tattoos, and scarification, goths set themselves free. Self-reinvention, that’s the key to the Gothic realm, and the way to post your declaration of independence is to flip your finger at God’s design for humankind. Provoke reactions. Express who you are. Stand on the giddy edge of eternal damnation and stare defiantly down into the fire and brimstone that dances and bubbles in the volcanic crater of hell.

Petra Zydecker.

The minister’s rebellious daughter.

Dressed in black, with pagan tattoos and a stud of a skull through her nose. Sitting wantonly on a throne carved with biblical horrors from the Old Testament. Backed by profane art that made her dad cry foul. A deck of hellish tarot cards in her hand.

“Did Bret win your case?”

“Easily.”

“When was that?”

“Just before his breakdown and stint in the asylum.”

“When’d you next see him?”

“Not until last year. By then he was writing novels and had retired from the law. For
Crown of Thorns,
he desired a striking cover. He’d seen my previous card for the Hanged Man, and he told me about the murder in North Vancouver. I designed this one”—another flick of the hand—“and it became the jacket on his new book.”

“Did you come to the convention with Bret?”

“No, we met on the tour.”

“The ghost tour?”

“Yes.”

“The one that passed Ted Bundy’s house?”

“Do you suspect
me?
”

“Not yet,” said Zinc.

“Ahhhhh …” Petra drew out the sound like a succubus stealing the breath of a sleeping man. “You want to know if I spent last night fucking Bret?”

“Did you?”

“Yes.”

“All night?”

“With breaks. Bret’s a driven man.”

“Can anyone corroborate?”

“Sure, room service. Ask the skinny kid to describe my tattoos. He stared long enough.”

“What room?”

“Mine. Main floor. 104. Off the pool.”

“You see the problem?”

“No.”

“The facts defy the odds. The North Vancouver death.
Crown of Thorns.
Your Hanged Man card. Ted Bundy’s house. Thirteen Steps to Hell. The horror convention. You and Bret.”

“So?”

“That’s beyond coincidence.”

“What you call coincidence, I call fate. Life is preordained. That’s the Tarot.” Petra set the deck face down on the stool and fanned the cards for Zinc. “When doubters question fate—coincidence, if you like—I ask them to consider this: Lincoln was elected president in 1860, Kennedy in 1960. Each was concerned about civil rights, and each had a child die while he was in the White House. Each was assassinated on a Friday, in the presence of his wife. Each was shot in the head, and from behind. Lincoln’s secretary, Kennedy by name, advised that the president not go to the theater. Kennedy’s secretary, Lincoln by name, advised that the president not land in Dallas. John Wilkes Booth was born in 1839, Lee Harvey Oswald in 1939. Booth gunned down Lincoln in a theater and ran to a warehouse. Oswald gunned down Kennedy from a warehouse and ran to a theater. Both men were killed before standing trial. The successors of both Lincoln and Kennedy were named Johnson. Andrew Johnson was born in 1808, Lyndon Johnson in 1908. Both were Democrats from the South who served in the Senate. The names Lincoln and Kennedy both contain seven letters. The names Andrew Johnson and Lyndon Johnson thirteen letters. The names John Wilkes Booth and Lee Harvey Oswald fifteen letters.

“Well?” asked Petra. “Fate? Coincidence?”

“Touché,” Zinc acknowledged.

The goth queen smirked.

“The locks on the corners of
The Antichrist?
What’s hidden under that painting?”

“Another card.”

“Which one?”

“For that, you’ll need a warrant. I’m giving the secret away at the end of the con.”

“To whom?”

“The Tarot will decide. Pick a card, Inspector.”

Zinc hesitated.

“Come on,” Petra coaxed. “Take a walk on the wild side.”

Selecting a card, he flipped it over. The image exposed was that of an animate skeleton wielding a scythe. The Grim Reaper stood in a pool of blood, and floating in what could be a cauldron of tomato soup was an assortment of body parts that had been hacked off by the blade.

Number 13.

The Death card.

Zinc Chandler and Ralph Stein were seated at a table in the café of the Captain Vancouver Hotel. Lunch was over, so they had the restaurant almost to themselves. Ralph, uncharacteristically, had ordered a salad. From the scowl on his face, it was clear the detective wasn’t enamored with his rabbit food.

“That looks healthy.”

“It’s your fault, Chandler. I’m slimming down to draw the eyes of the lookers away from you.”

“I’m single. You’re married, Ralph.”

“What future is there in a relationship with a woman who’s always at you to slim down?”

“Incisive logic, that.”

“If only women would see me for my beautiful mind, and not you for your hollow shell.”

“Yoo-hoo,” Zinc called out, waving to the waitress. “I’ve changed my mind. I’ll have a plate of fries.”

“You wouldn’t!”

“Watch.”

When the fries arrived, the Canadian sprinkled them with vinegar. The American winced at the travesty.

“I don’t understand it.”

“What? Vinegar?”

“Isn’t that what they fed that poor schmuck on the cross? Not the Hanged Man. The other guy.”

“It’s better than gravy, Ralph.” Zinc patted his flat belly. “Did you get a list of those on the ghost tour?”

“The names Mort could recall.”

“Bret Lister?”

“Tick.”

“Petra Zydecker?”

“Tick.”

“Wes Grimmer?”

“Tick.”

“Yvette Theron?”

“No. She was here, doing registration, while the bus was en route to Bundy’s house.”

“Good.”

“You thought she was lying?”

“I keep an open mind.”

“If there’s a woman in the case, I’d bet on Petra.”

“There’s a problem with that bet.”

“What?”

“Alibis. On Friday night, while the severed head was being staked outside Ted Bundy’s house and the body was being hanged in the pit of the Thirteen Steps to Hell, Petra and Bret were here in her room making the beast with two backs.”

“Conjuring?”

“Fucking.
Othello,
Ralph. ‘Your daughter and the Moor are now making the beast with two backs.’”

“Hey, speak American.”

“Sorry. That was English.”

“Speaking of which …” Ralph reached out and snaffled one of the fries. “By the way, we have an ID on our Hanged Man. His name is Bev Vincent. A businessman from Texas.”

“Here for the convention?” Zinc asked.

“No, he’s a scientist. Crystal technology. He flew into SeaTac late yesterday but never reached his hotel.”

“This one?”

“No. The Hilton downtown.”

“How’d you make him?”

“Security prints on file. They matched those of the body at the foot of the Thirteen Steps to Hell.”

“Someone picked him off between the airport and the Hilton?”

“Looks like.”

Ralph attacked Zinc’s fries with lip-smacking relish. The vinegar had no effect in keeping him at bay. Catching their server’s attention, he ordered a side of gravy.

“If not for their alibis,” Zinc said, “Bret and Petra would be in the glue. He was her lawyer before all this started. Bret defended her against an obscenity charge brought by her father. Petra’s a Tarot obsessive into
outré
art. Sex and violence. Her dad’s a minister. A Bible-thumper and his wayward daughter. Get the picture, Ralph?”

“Did Bret win the case?”

“He routed Petra’s dad. The white knight syndrome. But then Bret broke down.”

“How bad?”

“He went crazy. And was committed.”

“Know the cause?”

“I was there.”

It was several years ago, the Mountie told the detective. Having been shot in Hong Kong, Zinc was on sick leave. The Supreme Court of Canada had ordered a new trial in one of the inspector’s cases, so, to give evidence, he had to return to Vancouver from the farm in Saskatchewan where he was recuperating. That’s where he was when a deputy sheriff burst into the courtroom to announce that a riot was shaping up in the case going on next door, and that the presiding judge had hit the panic button.

Bret Lister was a crusader. A lawyer on a mission. A Don Quixote tilting at windmills that other lawyers avoided. A self-appointed scourge of the justice system, Bret was a feisty scrapper who reveled in fighting unpopular cases for the little guy. He accused the government of stealing Native lands, and cops of systematically undermining civil rights, and doctors of using their patients for quack experiments, and churches of actively recruiting pedophiles. A renegade who refused to play by the rules, Bret argued with judges, displayed contempt for opposing counsel, and embraced the eccentrics that others dismissed as hopeless causes. In the end, law became his entire life. Sixteen hours a day and seven days a week. Amphetamines kept him going, and booze put him to sleep. Overworked, over-fatigued, and chronically sleep-deprived, Bret plunged into a paranoid state and ultimately conjured up a vast conspiracy that cast the entire judiciary and the Law Society as traitors out to thwart him and his beleaguered clients.

“He hit the wall and crashed?”

“But not without a fight. Bret filed a lawsuit alleging that the courts and every lawyer but him was corrupt. When the Law Society brought an application to dismiss the suit as frivolous and vexatious, he packed the gallery with a mob of supporters: the eccentrics, leeches, and malcontents gathered by his practice. What brought them out was a promise from Bret that he would expose the corruption responsible for their tragedies.”

“Did he?”

“He tried, Ralph. In a filibuster speech.”

“What happened?”

“The Battleax took the case herself.”

“The Battleax?”

“Chief Justice Morgan Hatchett.”

As Zinc described that legal donnybrook to Ralph, the one-on-one between the no-nonsense judge and the paranoid lawyer had degenerated like this:

“Sit down, Mr. Lister!” the chief justice ordered.

“Stand up, Judge.”

“You’re a disgrace to the bar.”

“And you’re a carbuncle on the ass of the law. I demand that you disqualify yourself for bias.”

“Shame! Shame!” shouted the chorus in the gallery.

Chief Justice Hatchett was ready to spew lava. With iron-gray hair chopped in a severe cut, eyes tough enough to drill through diamonds, and a mouth permanently pursed from years of reprobation, she looked to Zinc like Maggie Thatcher’s wicked stepsister. He and the deputy sheriff had just entered the court.

“You’re in contempt, Mr. Lister.”

“I’m way beyond that. Contempt falls short of the disrespect I have for you.”

“Arrest him,” Hatchett ordered.

A court security officer moved toward Bret, who stood defiantly at the counsel table, but the deputy sheriff failed to reach the lawyer
.
As he was sidling along the rail that separated the counsel area from
the public gallery, a fist flew out of the mob.

Whap!

Down went the deputy.

Another sheriff grabbed hold of the offending arm and hauled the man who threw the punch over the barrier.

“Rescue him!” Bret incited, vaulting over the rail into the gallery. “Follow me!” he shouted, like a First World War sergeant trying to coax his troops out of the trenches. His troops were having second thoughts about the waiting machine guns.

“You have no power over me!” Bret shouted, spittle flying, at the judge. “I’m standing among comrades!”

A wedge of deputy sheriffs stormed the gallery.

“Scum! Scum!” Bret yelled.

The court security officers grabbed hold of him.

“You fucking Nazi!” Bret screamed at Hatchett.

There was pushing and shoving on both sides before the deputies could snap on the cuffs. As they trundled Bret out of his mob of die-hard disciples and away to jail, the last words the firebrand lawyer heard from the hard-assed judge were these: “You’re remanded to the Forensic Psychiatric Hospital on Colony Farm for a thirty-day assessment to determine if you are fit to be charged with contempt of court.”

“Lawyers!” Ralph scoffed, shaking his head as the Mountie finished recounting what he had witnessed several years ago in the Battleax’s court.

“That’s the last I saw of Bret until today,” said Zinc. “Later, I heard that he had slashed his wrist with his fingernail in jail and used the blood to scrawl a petition for his release on the wall of his cell. So convinced was he that authorities would try to poison him that Bret refused to eat until a nurse or guard had tested the food in front of him.”

“Now
that’s
how to diet,” said Ralph.

“It was shortly after Bret’s breakdown that the Ripper and I fought it out on Deadman’s Island. He was motivated by symbols hidden in the Hanged Man to attempt to control the occult realm by signifying them in blood. He made a mistake in the signing and went completely mad. I was stabbed in the back and nearly killed. DeClercq landed on the island and made the arrest. Unfit to stand trial, the Ripper was sent to the Forensic Psychiatric Hospital on Colony Farm—”

“Where he met Bret,” Ralph completed.

The waitress brought his gravy. Stein dug in. A drip dribbled onto his belly and stained his tie.

“While Bret was being psyched, the Law Society had to appoint a lawyer to oversee his practice. Wes Grimmer was a brash up-and-comer who could handle Bret’s mishmash of oddball clients and the tough legal issues they clung to. Out of that assignment, Wes got a high-profile case of serial and multiple murder when Bret referred the Ripper to him from inside the hospital.”

“Cozy,” said Ralph.

“Therapy, supposedly, patched up Bret. After he was declared fit, the contempt proceedings advanced. Bret apologized to the judge for his behavior. Grimmer, who acted for him, offered psychiatric evidence to the effect that Bret had suffered a psychotic episode. Acute paranoia brought on by mental exhaustion from stress and burnout caused by a crushing workload. The court imposed a fine and barred Bret from practicing law for a year. The Law Society agreed. With four hundred B.C. lawyers seeking help every year for alcohol, stress, and marital problems, it sees mental illness as a disease.”

“So Bret began writing?”

“Horror,” said Zinc. “He joined the long line of lawyers who jump ship from trials to novels.”

“Fiction to fiction,” said Ralph.

The cops shared a laugh.

“The last I heard, he and Wes had formed Lister & Grimmer. Bret didn’t return to practice. He was the silent partner. With Wes working a client base fanatically loyal to Bret, it was worth his while to have Bret’s name on the letterhead. And as for Lister, he could tap the files for story ideas and promote himself as a courtroom insider who still had a finger on the pulse of crime.”

“Including the Ripper.”

“So it seems.”

The waitress brought them cups of coffee and a bowl of creamers. Sugar and artificial sweetener were already on the table. Zinc took his java black. Ralph took the works.

“A year and a half ago, when we found Cardoza strung up like the Hanged Man, I wondered if the Ripper had escaped from Colony Farm. I called the psych hospital and was assured not only that he was still there, but also that no one except his legal representatives had been out to visit him for years.”

“You left it at that?”

“The M.O. was different from that in the Ripper’s crimes. The Ripper’s Tarot motive was out there for everyone to read in
Deadman’s Island,
Alex’s book on the case. And I had the pimp and the hooker.”

“Who were dead.”

“Running from the law. Besides, they fit the M.O. to a tee. Cardoza was the victim of a sex crime. The nimbus of nails was pounded in while he was the sandwich meat in a two-on-one. A woman in front and a man from behind was one scenario, and that was a service that the hooker and the pimp were known to offer.”

“Case closed.”

“Until your call. And when I arrive in Seattle, what do I find? Not only that your Hanged Man mirrors mine, but also that Bret and Wes are here.”

“Theory?”

“Sort of. Consider this: Bret knew Petra from defending her on the obscenity charge. Petra is a hard-core goth, into the Tarot. Sex and blood. Bret broke down in court and was sent to Colony Farm. There, Bret met the Ripper and was told the secret in the Hanged Man. Bret got together with Petra after his release and fell under her sexual spell. Bret told her what the Ripper had told him, so Petra seduced Bret into killing Cardoza to sign the Hanged Man symbols properly in blood. Their joint sex crime inspired Bret to write
Crown of Thorns
and inspired Petra to illustrate it with
The Antichrist.
The death wish is part of being a goth, so perhaps they came to Seattle to flirt with your death penalty. Bret and Petra were on the bus that drove past Ted Bundy’s house, and they had a copy of the WHC program that located the Thirteen Steps to Hell in Maltby Cemetery. They killed your Texas businessman in a manner that would draw attention to
Crown of Thorns
at the convention, then gave each other an alibi for the overall time of the crime.”

“Sounds good,” Ralph said. “It fits the evidence. The three young vics died because they, too, followed the X-Y coordinates in the program out to the cemetery, and they interrupted the killers in the act of stringing up their Hanged Man.”

“In the wrong place at the wrong time,” said Zinc.

“The three could identify Bret and Petra for the police. They were all at the
same
convention.”

“Our problem is that there wasn’t enough time for Bret and Petra to be the killers. As guest of honor, Bret was on a panel at the convention last night. Countless horror fans heard him talk. There wasn’t time for him to spike the head upside down outside Ted Bundy’s house. Assuming Petra did it alone, there’s another problem: Bret and Petra swear they were in her hotel room having sex all through the night. Room service confirms they were in the hotel at both one-forty-five and four in the morning. I don’t see how they could have driven the distance to Maltby Cemetery to string up the headless corpse and ax the three young men.”

“I’ll have someone time it.”