Incubi - Edward Lee.wps (8 page)

When the meal which she'd consumed completely, double-baked potato included was done, Jack reached for the check, but she snatched it up first. "This is not a county tab, Captain. Shame on you for lying to me."

"Hey, I lie to women all the time."

"You feel emasculated when a woman pays?"

"Pay the goddamn tab, Dr. Panzam. You can pay my phone bill too, if you want, but that wouldn't make my balls feel any smaller."

Karla Panzram laughed out loud. As they were leaving, she said, "Forgive me for toying with you, Captain. You're a moving target. Did you know that?"

Jack lit another Camel. "A moving target for what?"

"A woman's psychology. We're all devils on the inside."

"Do you hear me arguing?"

But on West Street she turned serious. She looked at him almost dolefully. "I'm worried about you, Captain Cordesman. If you decide you need some help and I don't mean with the Triangle case please call me."

She left him at the corner walk, disappearing like an angel or like a ghost into the glare of midday sun.

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"Meat racks!" Ginny whispered.

"Shhh!"

The two figures stepped through the foyer. "Ah," Erim Khoronos said. "Here they are now." He turned from the bar, pouring glasses of spring water. "Marzen, Gilles, it's my pleasure to introduce our guests, Ms. Virginia Thiel and Ms. Veronica Polk."

Veronica felt an itch of rage. Why didn't he introduce me first? she thought as a child might. But Ginny was right. These guys were...gorgeous.

Standing before them were two tall handsome young men in identical baggy white slacks and sleeveless T-shirts. Marzen had long blond hair; Gilles' was black and cut like a marine's.

Veronica's gaze felt immobile on them, and she could sense Ginny's dopey man-grin. Both men were well-muscled and well-tanned.

"It's very nice to meet you," Marzen said, shaking hands. His hand was large, rough. His accent sounded German.

"We're happy you can be with us," Gilles added. A French accent, obviously. His hand was softer, more delicate.

Veronica raced for something to say but found nothing.

"See to their bags," Khoronos said.

Marzen and Gilles left.

Shit! Veronica thought.

"Shit!" Ginny whispered.

"Marzen and Gilles are my charges," Khoronos said. "I think of them as sons."

"They seem very nice," Ginny said. "How did you meet them?"

"Through my dealings abroad, over time," Khoronos answered, but it wasn't much of an answer.

Veronica felt certain it wasn't meant to be. "They're masterful men, as you'll soon see," he went on. "They look upon me as their pundit, so to speak. I'd like to think that much of their aesthetic insight comes from me."

As you you'll soon see? Veronica thought. What did that mean?

"I must tend to some things now. Dinner will be at seven."

Abruptly, Khoronos left them alone in the great room.

"This is really strange," Veronica said, and sat back down on the couch. She jiggled her ice in the spring water.

"I think it's fun. It's mysterious." Ginny grinned. "And we're definitely going to get laid."

"Ginny, we're not here to get laid."

"What, you took all that stuff he said seriously? Come on, Vern, it's all a game to him. He's rich and bored and he likes games."

"Keep your voice down," Veronica suggested.

"He thinks of himself as some artistic seer or something. It makes him feel good to invite artists up here and pretend he's teaching us something. All this whole thing is leading to is an orgy. The decadence of the idle rich."

"You're rich."

"Yeah, but I'm not idle. This whole thing's a party, so I'm gonna make the best of it. I'm gonna party my face off."

Some party. Veronica looked at her spring water. Khoronos had informed them that no alcohol was allowed in the house. No tobacco either, and no drugs, not that Veronica did them. "True artists must maintain immaculate spirits," their host had said. "Any substance which taints the spiritus is forbidden in my home."

Eventually she and Ginny went out on the balcony off the kitchen, a huge deck which overlooked the pool. A faint breeze rustled through the trees, and a scent of pine. "You sure changed your tune about Khoronos," Veronica said.

"Just because I know what makes him tick doesn't mean I don't want to get into his pants anymore." Ginny closed her eyes, turned her face to the sun. "I do and I will. And Marzen, Gilles I'll ride their brains out too. Everyone's got to cut loose sometime."

"Cut loose, huh? That's what life's all about?"

"You want to know what life's all about? First I'll tell you what it's not about. It's not about babies, two-car garages, a dog in the yard, and a station wagon in the driveway."

Ginny hated domesticity, but Veronica didn't know how she felt about that herself. Jack had never actually proposed to her, but the implication of marriage was clear. Had that been what scared Veronica off?

"It's about independence, Vern," Ginny continued. "That's the only way a woman can be free."

Veronica wanted to say something mean, like. You're only saying that because it's the only way you can rationalize two failed marriages. "Freedom and sexual abandon are synonymous?"

"Sexual liberty, smartass. If you don't do what you want, you're actually doing what someone else wants. Whether it's a person or society doesn't matter. It's subjugation. If a guy fucks everything that moves, that's okay because it's an accepted trend. But when a woman does it, she's a slut.

Men can be free but women can't. It's a bunch of sexist bullshit. My rebellion is my right of protest. I will not allow myself to be subjugated. I'll do anything I want, anytime I want."

Sometimes Veronica forgot she was talking to a notorious feminist. She wanted to argue with Ginny but couldn't. Veronica had thought that being in love was her freedom, but freedom had its price, didn't it? Experience, she thought. Being in love had kept her from experiencing what she felt she had to as an artist. Either way, she was torn between ideals.

Ginny lit a cigarette.

"Khoronos said no smoking," Veronica reminded.

"No smoking in the house; this is the balcony. And..." Ginny paused, peering down. "Well, what have we here?"

Marzen and Gilles walked across the backyard. Off one of the pool decks stood a rack of weights and a bench.

"See?" Ginny observed. "Men are such vain assholes. Without their muscles and their cocks they have no identities."

But Veronica remained looking on. Marzen and Gilles each peeled off their T-shirts and began curling dumbbells of formidable size. They seemed bored, curling the weights and speaking casually. They seemed to be speaking French.

"But I still love 'em," Ginny went on. "Check out the beefcake."

Veronica couldn't help not. In moments, their rippled backs shined, muscles flexing beneath their tanned skin. It was erotic, earthy, the way their sweat sheened their flesh. Veronica caught herself in a secret image: running her hands over those slick pectorals, exploring. At once she felt dizzy, like the first time she'd met Khoronos. She felt prickly.

"They know we're watching," Ginny said.

"They do not," Veronica objected. Or did they? Her throat felt thick. Next image: herself naked, squirming atop Marzen...

"And you're trying to tell me you don't want to cut loose?" Ginny continued to goad. "That's subjugation too. You're afraid to release your inhibitions. Is that freedom?"

Veronica felt lost in her imaginings.

Ginny crushed her cigarette and dropped it into the bushes below. "You know," she said, "men have been using women for the last fifty centuries. It's high time we started using them back."

Veronica imagined Marzen poised nude above her. His sweat was dripping off his chest onto hers, hot, like hot wax.

"They like to show off?" Ginny was saying. "I'll show them some showing off."

Veronica gasped within the frame of the vivid image. Marzen penetrated her. Her eyes closed, the image cocooned her. She could picture Marzen's penis sliding in and out...

Oh, for God's sake!

The fantasy was ridiculous, a useless breach of reality. She was like a high school girl dreaming of the quarterback.

"What the " Veronica turned, breaking her muse. "Ginny!"

"Hey, I'm showing off." Ginny had removed her blouse, braless beneath. She waved the blouse in the air, in circles. "Save your strength, fellas! You're gonna need it!"

"Ginny, are you nuts!"

Below, Gilles looked up at the spectacle and chuckled.

"That's one's mine," Ginny said.

But Marzen's face remained plain. He was not looking at Ginny. Instead, his eyes bored directly into Veronica's.

«« »»

Jack owned a century-old row house on Main Street, which he'd inherited from his father. The equity was preposterous. It had been purchased in the late fifties for fifteen grand; today he could sell it for three hundred grand, and it wasn't even in very good shape. Jack lived in the upstairs and rented the downstairs to a couple of college kids. The row house was essentially the only thing he had of real value.

He didn't sell because he liked it here. He liked the city's ambience or the persona, perhaps of its age and its history. His bedroom window showed him the City Dock; the bright vanishing point of Main Street to the sea looked surreal. He loved the faint salt scents off the bay, and the city's lights when it was late. He liked being lulled to sleep by the ghostly chimes of sail lines striking the masts of countless boats in the docks. The sound was indescribable.

He showered and dressed without really knowing what for. Never drink alone, Craig had once philosophized. Jack refused to keep liquor in the house, his only gesture of constraint. He could see himself in ten years, or even five a holed-in drunk, empty bottles piled high in the kitchen. At least in bars, someone else worried about the bottles.

Light classical issued from the dilapidated stereo; it was all he could listen to without being distracted. Distraction was any investigator's enemy. He wondered if love was too. How many marriages had exploded because of The Job?

Here is my love, he thought. He closed his eyes, to see it in his head, the neat red letters.

HERE IS MY LOVE

And the great star-pointed triangle.

Not an act of murder, an act of love. He remembered thinking that the instant he'd stepped into Shanna Barrington's bedroom. Karla Panzram had verified this, but with trimmings he couldn't imagine. The killer had taped her eyes so she couldn't see what was coming, had tied her up so she couldn't move. He'd adored her as he extracted her entrails.

Shanna Barrington had been scarified, but to what? What madness? Aorista, Jack mused. He'd looked it up in his paperback Webster's but found nothing. The FBI's Triple-I interservice link had reported back this afternoon: nothing. And nothing yet from Randy's good squad. The Interpol run would take weeks, and even though Auxiliary Procurements had authorized his request for a researcher, there was nothing more on that either. Most murders were solved within forty-eight hours. After that, the apprehension statistics plummeted.

Suddenly he was staring at the portrait of himself. Veronica had painted it, an abstract mash of wedges and smears, the pieces of which formed his face. The likeness, now, was distressing it looked like a man falling apart. He wondered whose face she was painting now.

When the phone rang, he jumped. The word Veronica echoed somewhere deep. Don't be an asshole, he told himself. What reason would Veronica have to call him now?

"Cordesman," Jack said.

"Hi, Captain. Your man's jizz won't type. He's no secretor."

Jack's brow creased. No, it definitely wasn't Veronica, it was Jan Beck from the Technical Services Division. "The killer's you mean?" he asked.

"I'm not talking about Bullwinkle's sperm, sir. And I'll tell you something, this guy's got a lot of love."

Jan Beck's voice was ashy, soft, which never fit with the way she talked. Talking to her was like talking to one of the guys, or worse.

"What do you mean, Jan?"

"He gave it to her like it was going out of style. Cum City up there. Only thing that doesn't jibe is the timing."

"He wasn't in there long enough to do her a bunch of times."

"Then your estimations are wrong, or he's the fastest draw in the East. Average ejaculation's four to six milliliters, up to ten after a long dry spell. This guy left more than thirty hung up past the minus ridge, and that's not counting the wetspot, which looked about as big as the state of Alaska. My estimation, this guy blew eighty mils of the joy juice, probably more. I'd say she had ten guys in there with her, but the cum's all morphologically identical. And this girl was ready for it. This was no aggravated rape."

Willingness, Jack remembered, snapping a Camel. Karla Panzram said that willingness was a key word for Charlie. "You're saying that the victim was willing, right?"

"She was definitely willing, Captain. Her lube glands were drained. Average girl doesn't dry up till she's been getting it steady for a couple of hours."

"But there was blood in the vagina. Was it her period?"

"That was a cervical bleed," Jan Beck said. "Not a rape-related abrasion. Last night Shanna Barrington was the best-lubricated woman in the county. You can't argue with a chromatograph."

"Maybe he "

"No artificial lubes either; they would've been obvious on the source spectrum. And he didn't use spit. It was all her up there."

Jack gulped. This was getting gross, and, knowing Jan Beck, it would probably get a lot grosser.

"The blood was a capillary trauma. Ready for why?"