CHIMERAS (Track Presius) (22 page)

I’d dropped Satish off at the Glass House and then joined Oscar at his favorite place, a dungeon kind of bar that smelled of stale beer, sweaty armpits, and acid reflux. Apparently, the fact that such place was called “Annie’s” added to the charm. 

I insisted on eating outside. The morgue had me maxed out on foul smells for the day. We sat in the shade of a wooden pergola, the knotty branches of a climbing vine bathing us in a fragrant, twinkling light. Wafts of teriyaki chicken and Philly steak tickled my nostrils and resuscitated my appetite. At a nearby table, a guy in a white shirt, black tie, and spiky hair enjoyed his meal while flirting on the mobile with his girlfriend—the beauty of living in a wireless era. By the salad bar, two ladies in jogging slacks and overdone make-up compared notes on caloric intake and hairdresser bills.

The waiter took our orders while ruminating a wad of pink chewing gum. She scribbled on her notepad and then scuttled off, a whiff of kitchen smells trailing behind her.

“I thought you liked your steak rare,” Oscar said, bringing the schooner to his mouth.

“Not today. I spent the morning at the morgue.”

He almost choked on his beer.

“It’s not funny. Listen, I was wondering if you could refresh me on the Ilke case.”

“Ilke? Peeping Tom?”

“Exactly the guy. I believe I read the term
voyeur
in the report, though.” I grinned.

Oscar had a hearty laugh that didn’t care if it made a few heads turn. “Yeah, that was Washburn. He said it’s an actual disease—no, wait,
mental disorder,
that’s what he called it. Forget Washburn. Everybody else at the Homicide table knew him by Peeping Tom. Why are you interested in the piece of scum?”

“What did he do?”

“He stalked women, preferably with an active sexual life. He’d study their schedule, patterns, routes, and most importantly, he’d find a way into their homes.”

“How to break in?”

“Uh-uh. The guy was sleek and methodic. He’d find a loose window, figure out where they hid the spare key, or snatch the key bunch from their office desk at work. He’d make a copy, and then return it to its exact place. The victims were completely unaware the perv had access to their places.”

“He never touched them though, did he?”

“No. He’d have been one hell of a serial rapist if he had. He just watched. Maybe leave a little souvenir on the side. Not so good at cleaning up after himself—that’s how we caught him.”

“Watched what?”

“You know. The lady taking a shower or using the restroom or having sex. Anything intimate. He’d find a hiding spot and sit there, sometimes for hours, as long as he could get a good peek. We even found a photo album in his place, with names and dates. To Washburn, this behavior made perfect sense. He said it’s a form of repressed homosexuality, where the man identifies with the woman’s pleasure by watching her.”

We interrupted the conversation in honor of the two juicy steaks the waiter brought to our table. Ravenous appetite and dining etiquette are mutually exclusive.

“Was Ilke ever violent?” I asked, half way through our meal.

“Are you kidding?” Oscar didn’t mind speaking with his mouth full. “He was completely innocuous. He broke into tears when we picked him up. Said he couldn’t help himself.”

“How did he choose the victims?”

“He’d pick a random face in the street or on Amtrak. Anywhere, in fact.”

“Random people?”

“Yes. Never met them before, never even approached them personally. Apparently, he felt too shy to talk to them.”

I snorted. “Too shy to talk to them but not to watch them slide off their panties?”

Oscar dropped the fork and carefully wiped his mouth. “Look, Track. If you’re really interested in this case, you should talk to Washburn. He wrote a detailed report on the guy.
Fascinating,
he called him.
A textbook case
.”

I smiled while sipping my wine. “Yeah, well. Nutcase to nutcase.”

“Come on, Track,” Oscar insisted with an emphatic sway of his hand. “Give the doc a break. I mean, mentals are his thing. He talks about them like Banjaree talks about computers, or Fraser about firearms. We all have our thing.”

“Yeah, right. Oscar, mentals do not qualify as ‘a thing,’ okay? Anyway, I’m not talking to the shrink. I had my share after the last shootout. All I’d like to know is what Ilke got out of it. Watching, I mean.”

“Control.”

“Control?”

He smiled and scratched a brow. “Washburn said voyeurism is a form of control over the sexual partner. Apparently, these people are control freaks.”

“But the guy wouldn’t even approach his victims.”

“Exactly. He remained emotionally detached. As long as he watched he felt in control, not overwhelmed by emotions. In other words, he could
unplug
as he willed. No pun intended.”

I had to laugh. “There was
no
plugging.”

Oscar shrugged. “Maybe in his mind there was.”

I tapped the fork on the table.
It makes no sense
. “What if he did know the victim? What if in fact he made her do it so he could watch? Would it still be a way of keeping things under control?”

Oscar drained his schooner and dropped it back on the table with a loud clonk. “Hell, Track, what do I know? I’m a cop and Ilke was the only voyeurism case I came across. If you want the expert—”

“Then go talk to Washburn. Yes, Oscar, got it. Thank you.”

Oscar smiled. “Actually, I was going to suggest you talk to the sleaze himself.”

“Ilke?”

“Yeah. As far as I remember, he’s booked for another year at least in Vacaville.”

*  *  *

Outside, the roar of the nearby boulevard hit me with its usual concert of engines, honks, and the throbbing speakers of a shiny black Carrera. I retreated to my Dodge and closed the door. As soon as I started the engine, Ravel greeted me with the opening notes of
Water Games
. Ah, oxygen for my ears. Except for the nagging voice popping into my head:
Why won’t you talk to Washburn, Ulysses
?

Because. I don’t like the guy.

Come on, he’s just another guy. With a little more education than you, but you’ve never been intimidated by education, have you
?

I don’t like the way he stares at me.

I know you, Ulysses
, his eyes tell me while his mouth says, “The pattern and depth of the stab wounds indicate this perpetrator has killed before.”

I know the animal lurking inside you.

I know the excitement you feel after every kill, the anticipation when you inhale the prey’s blood—luring, inebriating.

I know how many times you kept going back to the house, looking for
her, or so you thought. Until something snapped and suddenly you weren’t the victim anymore. You’d become the predator.

*  *  *

“You went back to the house?”

I nodded. “More than once. I’d jimmy one of the back windows and slide inside. It was empty. The for-sale sign stood slanted on the front lawn. The paint was new, but the stories were old. Nobody wanted to buy that house.”

Watanabe’s office was in complete darkness, save the neighborhood lights glimmering through the window and a small table lamp carving a cone of light over his desk. It made the circles beneath his eyes look ghastly. “What do you remember?”

What do I remember
.

I sank in the chair and looked away. August 1986. I mostly recalled smells, as vivid as a hot, summer day. The fresh paint on the walls, the acrylic coating of the new carpets, the reek of emptiness and abandonment… her fear, still there, in untouched corners, like the closet door under the stairs, or the baseboard in the bathroom.

They found her body sprawled at the base of the stairs, a pair of pink stockings tightly wrapped around her throat—the only piece of clothing still on her.

She was fourteen.

I’d crawl inside the house and scavenge the traces she’d left, no matter how faint. They frightened me and attracted me at the same time, because wherever I could still smell her, I could smell
him
, too.

“Danny Mendoza, age 19, car mechanic,” I said. “He’d made a copy of the house key when Lily’s mother left her vehicle at the shop for an oil change. They had nothing on him, absolutely nothing. There was no forced entry. He’d left no prints, no DNA, no nothing. Only a dead body.” I swallowed. “Lily’s.”

“And you tracked down… his smell?”

“He’d drive by the house from time to time. He’d park his red Camaro across the street, pull the window down, and smoke a cig.”

“Just that?”

“Just that.”

Watanabe’s eyes feigned incredulity. “How did you know it was him?”

“I didn’t. When I saw him there for the third time, I followed him to the shop. I asked him about his cars. He loved to talk about his cars. And girls. So I asked him about that, too. We became… buddies. Sort of.”

Red eyes, waning through thick curls of smoke, the reek of burnt plastic and wet dog, lacing my hands through the sheepskin seat cover as I hear him speak, his words gray and thick like molasses, like the air in the old Camaro. Him, slouched in the driver’s seat, a cigarette butt clinging to his greasy hands and a slur pasting his tongue.

You ever had a girl
?

No.

I’ve had many.
He laughs.
I make them beg, I do.

How
?

Yellow smiles echoing through the fog of dope.

I’ll tell you a secret. Can you keep a secret
?

I clutch the penknife in my pocket and nod. And that’s when he tells me. How he made a noose out of her stockings, wrapped it around her neck and made her beg. He watched her eyes beg,
Her eyes, man, the way she looked at me, pleading, don’t you get it, the more she begged the more exciting it got, I had her, I had to keep her begging me, I made her tell me she wanted more, I made her
…

It was too much to recall. Silence fell. A wall clock ticked somewhere in Watanabe’s office. Outside a dog barked at the moon. I squeezed my knees, wading through the murkiness of memories.

Watanabe’s flat cheekbones emerged from the cone of light. “Ulysses?”

“Huh?”

“What happened next, Ulysses?”

I shook my head. “I can’t—I don’t remember.” I licked my lips, snatched a bit of time. “They found me a few feet away from the car, my clothes drenched in blood—Mendoza’s blood. They uh—they said his throat and eyes had been carved out. They said the stab wounds were compatible with a penknife blade. The one I was holding, precisely.”

A veil of clouds covered the moon. The dog stopped barking. Through the window, black silhouettes of palm trees staggered against yellow streetlights.

Watanabe moved away from the table lamp. Darkness swallowed his face. “So the judge denied bail, based on the cruelty of the crime, but revoked the decision one month later,” he recalled.

The case had made headlines at the time.

“I told them he’d killed Lily, but they didn’t believe me until they found her clothes inside an old cooler Mendoza kept in his garage. They didn’t drop the charges, when they corroborated my story. A jury did, one year later. Acquitted on all counts.”

Watanabe’s face remained in the dark. His fingers played softly with a pen. “And you can’t remember anything of the attack? You must have suffered some wounds too, or else your lawyer couldn’t have claimed self-defense…”

I fished a key out of my pocket and dropped it on the desk. We both looked at it. “It was in my personal belongings, when they released me.”

“A key?”

“I checked. It was Lily’s house key.” 

Watanabe said nothing.

“From Danny. Don’t you get it, Doc?”

I saw his face nod through the shadows. “Your first trophy,” he said.

I looked out the window. The clouds had shifted, the moon was out again.

Watanabe tapped his pen. “I found your old medical records, Ulysses.”

I raised a brow, unsure how to take the statement.

“Ulysses Moris Presius.”

I grimaced. “That’s me. Greek grandfather and a longstanding family tradition of obnoxious names.”

He bobbed his head, clicked the pen. “Listen. Did your parents ever talk about taking you in for an MRI when you were ten, or maybe twelve? Did they ever mention—” He swallowed, corrugated his forehead. “Do you have any recollection of being at the hospital when you were six?”

“Six?” I shrugged. “Yeah. I think it was one of those childhood diseases. I got it pretty bad and they had to take me in.”

“The measles?”

“Must’ve been, yeah.”