Broken Monsters (20 page)

The obvious
suspect for the murder in the pottery should be the abusive ex-husband, Peter Morrow. And wouldn't it be perfect if it turned out he had a direct line to Daveyton Lafonte because maybe he plays illegal poker games with Daveyton's dad, and maybe he hunts deer—sometimes out of season because rules are for pussies—and maybe he does restoration on old houses for a living so he carries a nail gun around with him.

Maybe he's not
just
the kinda guy who would grip his ex-wife's face so hard during a drunken altercation in public that he leaves bruises on her jaw, but the kind of sick twisted fuck who would glue a kid onto a deer and turn his ex-wife into some kind of undersea nightmare and bake her in her own oven.

It would tie things up nicely, but unfortunately none of it is true.

He's the manager at an electronics store. He was out drinking with his buddies at a sports bar downtown. They can back up his story, as can the waitress, who got stiffed on the tip.

They're still running the fingerprint they found on the clay through all the national databases, Michigan State, the NCIC, but they take his fingerprints for comparison anyhow, and there's not even one point of intersection.

And Gabi can tell in the first five minutes of the interrogation that he is your garden-variety domestic-violence schmuck who uses his fists to work out his anxieties about what a pathetic loser he is.

Peter cries and snuffles when they make him look at the photographs. “I can't,” he moans. “I can't.” When he reaches the one of her boots, he sobs and gags. Boyd hands him the wastepaper basket and he spits into it for several minutes. “My wife. Who would do that to my wife?”

“Ex-wife who has a restraining order on you,” Boyd points out. “This an act of revenge? You didn't want to cough up for alimony anymore? You hire some sicko to do this for you?”

This time he does puke. They'll turn up hard-core pornography on his work computer at the store he manages. Nothing illegal, but bad enough to get him in trouble with the HR department.

Back in the briefing room, she runs through what they know. She writes on the board with the brand-new pen that Marcus had got her earlier from the local stationery store.

“This just got a lot bigger and uglier,” she says to the assembled detectives and honey-blond Jessica from the mayor's office, who is perching on a desk at the back, typing into her BlackBerry with ominous diligence. “We can assume that this is likely the work of one killer, rather than two different ones with similar interests in the same week—and that our friend is either an artist or somehow involved in the arts scene.”

She circles the word. “He wants us to see this, he wants recognition for what he's doing. Which is why we're not going to give it to him. We are not releasing the photographs to the press under any circumstances.”

“The mayor's office agrees.” Jessica looks up from her phone.

“If he's an artist, it explains why the victim profiles are so different,” Boyd says. “We think he's an opportunist. He grabs Daveyton because he's looking for someone to match up to his deer. He goes after the Spinks woman because she's already there in the pottery. Maybe he knows her.”

“He's trying to make it easier on himself,” Gabi elaborates. “Which means he's already thinking about it, planning it out. We believe he may have been interrupted, that he would have liked to put the body on display somewhere, and that he didn't intend for us to find it inside the kiln, despite the boots arranged outside it.”

She checks her notes. “Robin Mitchell, an employee, opened the store early this morning, at seven, and found the body. Well, the feet. There are witnesses to his whereabouts all night.”

“Including his lady friend who fled the scene,” Boyd says, to chuckles from the guys.

Gabi ignores them. “We suspect that the killer heard him and slipped out the back.”

“Our best piece of evidence right now is the fingerprint we found on the clay. We're running it through State and NCIC. We've obviously already eliminated Mitchell, the other employees, and, unfortunately for us, the ex-husband with the domestic assault charge and the restraining order.”

“You could also ask to run the fingerprints through military records,” Stricker says. And is it her imagination, or does he look contrite?

“You volunteering?”

“Sure. Some companies that require background checks take fingerprints as well. Hospitals, security companies. But technically we don't have access to that.”

“I got ways around technically,” Mike Croff butts in.

“I think this is sensitive enough without bringing privacy issues into it, Croff.”

“You want to catch this knucklehead or worry about some nursie who gets upset you looked at her file?”

“No, she's right,” Jessica says. “We keep this clean, please.”

Gabi taps the board.

“Evidence Tech is still working it. There's no sign of forced entry. The alarm company says that Spinks didn't hit the panic button. This means she opened the door.”

“Or maybe your killer was already inside?” Washington says.

“We found an aluminum baseball bat on the counter near the back door. Mitchell confirms that it belonged to Spinks.”

“So first she's worried about whoever's there, but then
she puts her weapon down,
” Boyd says. “So either he's the most charming harmless-looking motherfucker on earth—”

“Or it was someone she knew,” Gabi picks up. “Maybe both. We're working with the staff to compile a list of former employees, students, artists who have exhibited there. Problem is that sometimes we only have first names, so it's going to be a few days of compiling and then running the full names through Accurint to get their birth dates and social security numbers so we can run criminal history checks.”

“Put Tinker Bell on it,” Croff says.

“Sparkles, Mike. And he's already on it. Right now, we're narrowing it down to people who have been arrested. If we find something else interesting, someone who had a beef with her, or someone who did something unusual or weird or creepy, we'll prioritize that.”

“What's in the courtyard?” Stricker asks.

“Student kilns and also some tables and chairs where the staff have lunch in summer. The security guard, Donald Synder, who left early, says the gate to the courtyard from the parking lot is kept locked—and there's no sign of force.”

“You fingerprint him?”

“Of course. No match. He's real torn up. Blames himself.”

“Maybe he should,” Washington says with the cynicism that comes from long years of dealing with little mistakes that end bloodily. “You sure he remembered to lock the door?”

“It's possible he forgot, but the killer seems to have known where to find wet clay and how to operate the kiln, which suggests a familiarity with the premises and the equipment. So a member of the staff or someone who made use of the facilities. We're compiling a list of people who might have had a key.”

“We don't have anything to work with here, apart from her feet, which were sawn off postmortem, we believe, with piano wire, which is used to cut clay. He would have been able to find this on-site. There's a lot of blood in the kiln room, which would suggest that he prepared the body there. Her body melted right down to the bones, so we don't know if she was killed the same way as Daveyton because we don't have her skull to examine. However, there is a blood spatter on the wall broadly similar to the one we found at the bus stop where we believe Daveyton was killed.”

“Robin Mitchell reported that there was a pickup truck parked outside the pottery when he arrived, not in the parking lot, which is locked overnight, but on the street. It was not there when Boyd and I arrived on the scene. He says he only noticed it because the windshield was banged up, like it had recently hit something. He didn't get the plates and he's not sure of the color. It may have been white or silver.”

“Something like a deer, maybe?”

“Could be.”

“This is the curveball. And that's saying something with
this
particular homicide. The floor was covered in organic matter. Dead plants. Flowers and vines. I'm no gardener, but they looked exotic to me. We're getting a botanist to identify them. The staff and the security guard confirm that there were no flowers or plants on the premises when they left.”

“He ordered them in? Funeral flowers?”

“We're following up with local florists to see if anyone made a delivery. But these weren't fresh flowers. They looked like they'd been dead awhile. So if he brought them in, where did he get them, and why did he bring them? They're only in the store, not in the area where the ovens are—kilns, I mean.”

“And here's the clincher, which links our two bodies together. Both of them have this drawn on a wall somewhere near the body. Sparkles, you started in on the graffiti, I want you to follow up. Find out if it means anything. Gang sign, movie reference. Is anyone else doing this, or is it peculiar to our killer? Ask Bob for help if you need it. Okay, any questions?”

Jessica sticks up her hand. “What are you doing to resolve this as quickly as possible?”

“Everything we fucking can. Ma'am.”

The doorbell
is a wheezy mechanical birdcall. Clayton ignores it, but it goes off again, digging under his focus. He recognizes it, like the sound of the microwave ping, as an electronic absolute, calling him back from where he's been.

He's not sure where that is. He has troubling pictures in his head. He can't keep one thing in mind because he keeps getting distracted. He finds himself taking on the shapes that he's working on. He has to pull himself together, feeling his face with his hands to remember what he looks like.

The doorbell rings and rings. There is knocking. Then pounding and shouting.

“Clayton! Hello? You alive in there?”

No. No, it doesn't think so. Only for a moment. Now he's gone again, retreated into a corner of his mind, frightened by the sight of the blood. It has dragged the remains from the refrigerator upstairs down to the basement, and taken the other set from the freezer in here. It is time to prepare them.

The dream has no interest in the slight man tramping around the side of the house, or the woman beside him. It can see their legs from the slit window in the basement. The woman is wearing blue heels. Darcy—it hauls her name and face out of Clayton's memories. He recognizes her from the squat on Eastern Market.

Something is happening. It's to do with the doors it has marked in all the quiet places Clayton knew about—the dreaming places where the walls are thin. Something is building like a wave. Tsunamis pull all the ocean back before they come crashing in.

Their voices carry. They're tugging at the back door, which is inclined to get stuck. You have to pull the handle down and toward you. It returns to its work, their talking so much background noise. The flesh is harder to work with now that time has passed and the seams have puckered. It won't be able to use the meat glue again, it realizes with dismay.

“Well, where is he?” It's the woman's voice.

“Maybe he forgot. Went out of town. How the hell do I know? Help me with this door.”

“It's locked, genius.”

Its attention is jerked by the contempt in her voice. Clayton knows that tone well. It makes the man inside flinch.

“God, Darcy.” It's Patrick speaking. “Can you not be such a cow about this? I was trying to do a good thing for a man who is actually extraordinarily talented and overlooked, and I don't know why—” he tapers off. “Shit.”

“Do we still have the kiddie pool?” Darcy says, her high heels clopping past the window strip back toward the car. “We can go back to plan A.”

Patrick's lace-ups go scampering after her. “I just can't believe he would do this to me.”

“Believe it.”

It listens to the car start up, the petulant squeal of tires as they pull away. Clayton feels panicky relief that they're gone, that they didn't find them down here, red-handed. The dream doesn't care about that. It returns to the work, considering its choice of materials. It will not make the same mistakes again. It was interrupted with Betty, and besides, that was too private.

It needs an audience. It needs to reassemble the broken pieces. Like the lady said: Go back to plan A.

“You're up
early, bean.” Gabi is wearing her detective's uniform: jeans and hoodie, but is still padding around in the slippers Layla bought her that make your feet look like big clumpy yeti feet with claws. “You want some coffee?”

“I didn't sleep well.”

“Again? You've seemed off lately.” Her mom puts her palm on her forehead. “You coming down with something?”

Layla feels undone by this little gesture of love. “Maybe.”

It's killing her not to tell her mom. The secret feels like moths fluttering in her mouth, bashing against her teeth. But she can't face how angry Gabi is going to be, and even worse, how disappointed. The high-level discussions with her dad that will follow, strategizing what to do about her. Never mind dragging Cas into it.
We'll have to move again
. She's diligently deleting VelvetBoy2's messages, jumping every time her phone vibrates. “How's the case going?” she mutters.

Gabi grimaces. “Good, I suppose. We have another body.”

“That's good?”

“We got a perfect fingerprint, if we could only match it. We have a solid idea of the killer's profile. It feels like we're closing in.”

“I'm proud of you, Mom. I mean it.”

Gabi chokes on her coffee, looking both pleased and shy. “Thank you. That means a lot. I'm proud of you, too.”

But you wouldn't be, Layla thinks, if you knew.

“I know it's been crazy,” her mom continues, “but I'm going to make it up to you. As soon as this is all over, we'll do something really fun together.”

“We could go sailing,” Layla says, with as much enthusiasm as she can muster, because she thinks this will be something Gabi wants to hear. Judging by the smile on her mom's face, she's right. “Like you and Grandpa did. You can teach me.”

“I know a Russian gangster who might let us use his boat.”

“Seriously?” Layla isn't entirely sure if she's shocked or impressed.

“I think he might want me to sleep with him first though.”

“Mom!”

“I'm kidding.” And it's almost okay again. Look, things can be normal. They can joke around, and her mom has no idea she is being eaten alive on the inside.

“Maybe you should start dating,” Layla says, and is it her imagination or does Gabi look briefly sad?

“Maybe after I catch this bastard. Hard to be romantic when you're dealing with corpses all day.”

“But that's what you do every day.”

“Nothing like as bad as these ones. Listen, I was thinking maybe you should stay with Aunt Cheryl this weekend. She can come pick you up. I'm going to be working long hours, and it's not fair to you. You don't spend enough time with your cousins. Family is important.”

Layla's heart sinks. Her dad's superevangelical sister stays out near Bridgeport, and she has a party to sneak off to. “I'm staying at Cas's tonight!” she says, a little too quickly. Piling lies on top of lies. If she stayed with her aunt, they'd drag her to church on Sunday morning, and she would burst into flames just crossing the threshold.

“Oh,” Gabi says, surprised at her vehemence. “Should I call her parents?”

“Mr. Holt's crazy busy at work, I'll get him to call you this evening.” She's hoping that by then Gabi will be so wrapped up in the case she won't notice that she hasn't got a confirmation.

“Perfect. I'm going to head into the office. You need a ride anywhere?”

“No, I'm going to chill this morning. Practice my lines. Oh God, that reminds me. I need an ashtray.”

“Layla. Is there something you want to tell me?”

Yes. Yes. Fuck, yes, Layla thinks. “No,” is what she says. “It's for the play. We need a prop to help us get into the role. My character seems calm, but she's this hot mess inside. I think she probably smokes to keep up the façade.”

“Look in the basement. My old one might still be there. Remember it? Or were you too young when I quit? It's this art-deco piece, like the inside of a seashell, beautiful colors.”

“Awesome. Thanks, Mom.”

“As long as it's just an act and you don't take it too far. What's it called,” her mother snaps her fingers, “when actors put on forty pounds for a role, or run out and get real tattoos?”

“Method acting. This Russian actor Stanislavski came up with it.”

“No method, okay? Or Russians. Definitely stay away from the Russians, especially ones with boats.”

“Got it,” Layla says.

Gabi downs the rest of the coffee and checks her gun before she slides it into the holster under her arm. This is the moment to tell her, Layla thinks, right now, before she walks out the door, back into the nucleus of the case.

 “Hey, Mom!” she yelps, and Gabi turns—but she can't do it. “I meant it,” she says. “You should start dating.”

Gabi leans against the door. “I tell you how to run your love life, beanie?”

“All the time!” Layla protests.

“That's because you're a minor. Have fun with Cassandra. Stay off the streets, okay?”

She comes back a moment later, cursing. “You couldn't tell me about the slippers?”

“I was hoping you'd make it all the way to the precinct.”