“Is he Caucasian?”
“He….” Lisa stared off as if she had to search for the
sí-no
.
“Is he Latino?”
Lisa thought hard.
Carolyn scribbled some notes and then looked up. “Is he of mixed heritage?”
“No.” Lisa looked as if she’d surprised herself. “No, he’s not.”
Carolyn tried a barrage of ethnicities: Greek, Lebanese, Egyptian, every Asian type she could think of, and on and on. Jacob and I chimed in too, but all of our guesses were definite “no”s.
After fifteen minutes of hunting, Carolyn held up her hand. “Let’s move on,” she said. “We’ll wear her out if we continue in a nonproductive vein. She’s a resource, not a suspect.”
“Unofficially,” Jacob said.
“Unofficially.” Carolyn turned to face Lisa, her hands on her knees. “Let’s look at his history. Has he killed more than two victims?”
“Yes.”
“More than two in this city?”
“No.”
“Is he intending to kill again?”
“Yes, I think.”
“Too vague,” I said. “Maybe he’s crazy and he doesn’t even realize he’s killing them.”
“Right,” said Jacob. “He’s so sexy they just die from the touch of his dick.”
I felt my face flush so red at that one I had to hide it in the napkin, but Lisa went pale.
“Yes,” she said quietly.
“You’re kidding,” said Jacob. “Yes?”
“There’s something paranormal at the heart of this,” Carolyn said, mostly to herself, as she jotted some more notes.
“Yes,” said Lisa, and I shivered.
Chapter 11
We rested awhile, turning on the news, which nobody watched, and then they grilled Lisa again. I could tell she was getting fatigued, but she’s a tough girl and she was willing to keep going with it late into the night.
If we couldn’t get an I.D. on the killer from the witnesses, Jacob reasoned, we’d just have to get a look at him ourselves. We narrowed our questions down from, “Is he in the city?” to “Is he east of…?” “Is he north of…?” “Is he on this block?” “Is he in this building?” “This apartment?”
I think even Lisa was amazed at the power of the
sí-no
in the hands of a pair of relentless questioners.
“Does he live in this apartment?” Carolyn asked.
“No.”
“Is he alone?”
“No.”
Jacob stood up. “I think we’d better pay Casanova a visit. Right now. You go home,” he told Lisa. “No gun, no badge—it’s safer for you that way.” He turned to me. “You riding with us?”
The image of me riding in the back seat like a little kid returned. “I’ll…uh…take my car.”
Carolyn verified the address with me and I nodded. “Let’s go,” he said, and we were off.
I turned off the GPS and drove there myself. We headed for the northern edge of Boystown again, not two blocks from the record store where the clerk I’d dated used to work. I wanted Maurice. Or Lisa. Or even to be sitting in that damn back seat. I turned the GPS back on just to have a little company, though since I hadn’t entered a destination, its tasteful British voice was silent.
An SUV pulled away from the curb right next door to the apartment building and I pulled in, glanced around, and found Jacob parking across the street. We met up at the gate.
This gate actually locked, unlike mine, but Jacob ran a pocketknife down the edge and it popped right open. We trooped across the courtyard to the far right vestibule, and Jacob studied the apartment numbers by the beam of his penlight. “Here’s the one,” he said, tapping on the name “J. Barlow.” “Get one of the neighbors to let us in.”
Carolyn glanced up to see which windows were lit. “They’re less likely to hide from her,” Jacob explained. “Strangers don’t realize that she’s the one they need to be afraid of, not me.”
“Ha ha,” she said dryly, then pushed a button. A woman’s voice said “hello.” “Official police business, ma’am. Please buzz us in.”
A crackle that sounded kind of like, “…
bzzt
…finally here…called…” came through the speakers and the inner door clicked open. Music with a heavy, thudding beat flooded out.
We jogged up to the second floor and stopped. Someone’s stereo blared so loud that I could feel the vibration through the soles of my shoes. Carolyn gestured to me and I bent so she could talk in my ear, not that I thought the suspect would’ve heard her if she’d shouted aloud. “Loud music—like the first victim.”
And maybe the second, for all we knew. The other half of Ryan Carson’s duplex had been empty that weekend. That’s why it’d taken so long to discover his body.
Jacob scowled at the unmarked doors. We were looking for apartment 2a. But there were three doors to choose from. Was ‘a’ on the far left or the far right? I touched one door, then another, but they were both rattling equally from the cranked up stereo. Jacob gestured for Carolyn to go with me, then pulled out his gun and approached the left-hand door—the most likely door, in my mind, if the lettering system went left to right like a western alphabet.
Of course, the right-hand door was closer to the stairs, and would be the first door you’d approach. I drew my gun and wished Maurice was there. He wasn’t very quick, but he was accurate.
Jacob’s hand was on his doorknob and he watched me to make sure I’d do the same. I put my hand on mine and felt the vibration carry right through it. Jacob nodded and we both tried our doors at once. Mine opened. I didn’t have time to see if his did or not.
I held my gun at my side, camouflaged by my body. There was no need for the whole, “Police! Freeze!” business since we were acting out a routine noise call, but the thought of coming face to face with the mystery man gave me the creeps.
Carolyn had her gun out, pointed to the floor. She edged to the right, my usual position, so I went left. I passed by the stereo and saw it was on. Framed photos on top had fallen over. I swallowed. I’d picked the magic door—lucky me.
I wished I could turn the damn music down. The beat of generic technopop made my fillings rattle. But at least it hid the sound of our entry and would give us a chance to get a look at whatever we were up against.
Carolyn ducked into a doorway then came out signaling clear. We made our way through a sparsely furnished dining room. I glanced into the kitchen—empty. She checked a bathroom. There was one room at the end of the hall, the door open a few inches with yellow light shining through the gap.
Carolyn held my glance for a moment and then nodded. The bedroom. It was the only thing left. I nodded back and we burst in together, both our weapons drawn.
It was like a bad porno, only I was there, front and center. A dozen candles ringed the bed, lighting the room in a warm, inviting glow. The pair on the bed were kissing while they fucked, and the muscles of the top’s buttocks flexed as he pushed in. The bottom was a tanned guy who clearly worked out. He lay back on the bed with his feet slung over his lover’s shoulders. The guy on top was tattooed and sinewy, his amber hair cut in a shag like an early-70’s glam rocker.
Carolyn stepped back, but I just stared. The tattoos were so strange, colors and whorls, and they seemed to undulate as the man moved, always moving, caressing, thrusting.
He couldn’t have heard us over the music. Couldn’t have seen us with his eyes closed. Yet somehow I could tell he knew we were there. He raised his head to look, breaking the kiss, and that’s when I knew for sure that he was our killer.
Something stretched between his mouth and his lover’s. It was thick, viscous, and thinner in the center than either end, like the tanned guy was full of syrup and the tattooed guy was sucking it out. It quivered there between them, glistening and slimy, and then it grew so thin in the middle that it snapped.
I know it was probably there just a nanosecond. But I saw what I saw. When this gelatinous funk snapped back toward the guy on the bed, there was a face in it, a stretched-out, human face. And it looked like it was screaming.
Then I staggered back, sickened by the sight of that ooze, but Carolyn was at my side with her gun leveled at the tattooed guy. “Freeze,” she shouted, her voice hardly audible over the music. “Police!”
He cocked his head and looked at her as if she were the most peculiar specimen, and then he looked back at me, and somehow, into me. He opened his mouth.
I didn’t want to know what was in there. I tried to look away, but the strength had leeched right out of me. I didn’t have enough left to even avert my eyes. I’d rather see anything but that sickening maw. But there it was, filling my vision, opening wide.
He was displaying himself to me, I think. Showing me that inside him was nothing, an absolute void. Pitch black where teeth and tongue and throat should have been. Flat black and featureless, like a poorly doctored photo. Nothingness had never been so scary.
And then he screamed.
At least, that’s the best way I can describe it. It was more like the shriek of a train trying to brake, hitting too many discordant, screeching pitches all at once. Horribly loud, even over the blare of the music, loud enough that it hurt, badly, and I shrank back and covered my ears.
I saw the dresser mirror beside me shatter, rather than hearing it. It was almost beautiful, like snow falling. A thousand shards glittering as they rained against my side.
Then the windowpane blew out, and gauzy curtains fluttered through with the force of the blast, like a gale had whipped up inside the room and sent them streaming toward the outdoors.
The guy with nothing inside him stretched, very quickly, until he was more of a rubbery line than a person. And he was out the window and gone before I could fully register how he’d even moved.
The beat of the music continued to pound through the soles of my feet, but I realized I couldn’t hear it. My ears were still ringing from the sound of that metallic shriek the killer had made before he’d disappeared.
Carolyn was beside me, tugging at the sleeve of my sportcoat, but I was just too stunned to acknowledge her. Then she was gone and the music stopped reverberating, and the quality of the sonic aftershock changed somewhat in my own hearing. And then Jacob was there, shaking me by the shoulders, hard. “Vic,” his mouth said, judging by the shape of it. “Vic.”
I tried to focus on him. I think he was clutching me so tightly he might’ve actually been hurting me, but I didn’t really care. Then Carolyn dragged him toward the bed and he left me there, leaning back against the closet door, standing amidst a spray of broken mirror.
Chapter 12
The sun was up by the time I was coherent enough to talk to Jacob. The paramedics said I was in shock. Jacob had done CPR on the tanned guy, one James Barlow, until the paramedics arrived, but it had been no use. James was victim number three—in our city, at any rate.
We lingered in Barlow’s courtyard, well away from the plainclothes officers and the techs who were starting to swarm the scene. “I couldn’t hear anything over that music,” Carolyn said. “But Vic held his head like he was getting split in two.”
“All right,” Jacob said. He pulled out his notepad. “So what did you see?”
“Well,” Carolyn said, “the men were…together. Having intercourse. And the man, um…well, the killer, looked at us and opened his mouth, like he was yawning. And then the mirror and the window shattered and he was gone.”
Jacob wrote very quickly. “Okay. But what did the killer look like?”
“Caucasian. About forty-five. Short hair, salt and pepper. Brown eyes.”
Jacob frowned. “That’s nothing like the other descriptions.” He turned to me. “Is that how he looked to you?”
I shook my head. “Thirty, maybe less. Tattoos.” I felt myself color. “Actually, I thought he looked like a young David Bowie.”
Carolyn looked away. “George Clooney,” she said.
Jacob’s eyes narrowed as he considered Carolyn. “You got a thing for George Clooney?”
Carolyn scowled at Jacob as if he was a jerk for even asking. “Don’t tease me.”
“I’m not. I have a theory, and I know you can’t lie to me if I ask you something directly. So. Do you?”
“I think he’s attractive, yes.”
Jacob looked at me. “David Bowie fan?” He wasn’t making light of it, not in the least, but it still felt too personal to divulge that Bowie’d been my biggest masturbatory fantasy until I discovered flesh-and-blood boys who were willing to experiment with me.
I thought of making a snide remark anyway, but I figured if Carolyn could admit her crush, I could admit mine. “What she said,” I echoed.
At least Jacob gave me the courtesy of not verifying my truthfulness by double-checking it with Carolyn.
“So our killer looks different to every person who sees him, tripping some part of the witness’ neurological wiring and showing him or her the image of someone they consider to be extremely attractive,” said Jacob.
Carolyn considered. “And so a majority of people are going to see the killer as someone of their own ethnicity. But different ages, different particulars. We haven’t asked any of the witnesses whether or not they thought the suspect was attractive. But it might be a promising line of questioning to pursue.”
Jacob stifled a yawn. “We’ve been at this more than twenty-four hours straight. I suggest we get some sleep and regroup at the Twelfth around two. That sound good to everybody?”
Carolyn was halfway to her car before I’d even had the chance to agree. Jacob blocked me with his body before I could follow. “Stay with me,” he said, so quiet I almost couldn’t hear him over the residual ringing in my ears. Or maybe it was my brain.
Relief washed over me, but it drained away as I realized that I really didn’t want Jacob to see me that way—spooked by some killer psychically disguised as David Bowie who sucked souls out of men while he fucked them. Because that was the only thing that syrupy stuff could’ve been. A soul.
And the killer’d gotten too much of it before we’d arrived, and now James Barlow was on his way to the Coroner’s.
“I really need to change my clothes,” I said, squeezing past Jacob as I tried to recall where I’d parked.
Jacob fell into step beside me with a couple of long strides. “Then stop at your place first and then come over. You don’t look so good.”