Ripper (18 page)

The elevator stopped and the door slid open.

The smell of disinfectant assailed Nick's nose. The room ahead was used each morning by the VD nurse, a table with stirrups glimpsed through the cracked door. Stepping out, he turned right toward the matrons' station, lured by the tinny smell of institutional coffee. A crazy was banging on the walls of one of the mental cells, literally shaking the small interview room next door. She was yelling something about "little Elvis" and "white underwear."

"I hope that isn't Karen Lake?" Nick said to the matrons, interrupting their pinochle game.

"It was," replied a tough-looking blonde, "but she calmed down. That's Mad Martha. The King's biggest fan."

"A tuque not a turtleneck!" Mad Martha bellowed, fat face squished against the Judas window of her cell. "Circumcise Elvis!" the madwoman shouted, as Lake was released from the cell next door. The mental cell was diamond-shaped with green walls and a red floor. It contained nothing but Lake herself. Naked beneath, she was dressed in paper coveralls. Tattoos peeked through the gaping holes.

"Gimme
crack,"
she begged.

Craven led her across the hall to the main interview room. Adjacent was a cooping loft with four bunk beds where female cops off nightshift slept if they were required in court
that morning. The interview room was yellow with a speckled floor, the light built into the ceiling and both windows grilled. One was open to the lane back of the loading bay, admitting kitchen smells from the Ovaltine Cafe. Nick and the juvie sat at a table with mismatched chairs while the matron stood by the door to squelch any false sexual harassment complaints. Someone had carved the name
Toto
into the tabletop. Someone else had written
I don't think we're in Kasnas anymore.
Was
Kansas
misspelled from drugs or the state of modern schools?

"I'll blow you if you gimme crack," Karen Lake slurred.

"That's the
last
thing you need," Nick replied.

Withdrawal was shutting the wretched girl's system down in stages. Her eyes were rheumy and she was short of breath. She clutched her belly from gut-aches and her mouth was cotton dry. She fidgeted like a puppet in a spastic's grasp. The muscles of one cheek and eye lost coordination. Cocaine gas from smoking crack delivers an instant high. Cut if off and the comedown is long, slow, and painful. She would no doubt sell her soul to the Devil for another hit.

"I won't caution you," Nick said, "cause you're in no condition to be formally questioned. Karen, you killed a man in front of two cops. You were high, chained like a dog, and bleeding from abuse. You're only fifteen so I want to help. I can't do that unless you help me. This talk is off the record. Anything you say stays in this room. Tell me what went down this afternoon."

It was a while before she spoke. "The Devil met Death as the Hanged Man, and I'm free at last. Tarot's dead. That's what matters."

"Tarot's the guy nailed upside down?"

Karen nodded.

"We've identified him as Steven Arthur Turow. Long record for robbery, pimping, drugs, and rape. Can you confirm that?"

"I knew him as Tarot." She gasped and held her stomach.

"Where'd you meet him?"

"Working the street."

"When?"

"Six months ago. The day I arrived."

"You came from Winnipeg?"

Karen nodded.

"Why'd you run away?"

"My mom kicked me out."

"Why'd she do that?"

"Her boyfriend fucked me. Said she didn't need the competition. I hitched west and hooked for food when I arrived. Tarot picked me up and took me to his room. We spent the weekend smoking crack. Then he turned me out to trick. Terry and me kept him in drugs."

"Terrence Henry Meadows?"

Karen nodded. "He worked the tranny strip on Davie off Burrard. How's your hand?" She eyed the splints on his fingers.

"I'm ambidextrous," Nick said, and threw her a smile.

"Gimme crack and I'll rim you," Karen whispered.

Beyond the open window, the rain poured down, pounding the alley trash cans like a set of drums. It would cleanse the city, but not the citizens.

"The Devil, Death, and the Hanged Man were painted on the walls. Giant Tarot cards around the block to which you were chained. There was a pentagram on the floor and an inverted cross. What do those cards mean?" Nick asked.

Unsteady on her feet, the girl stood up. With both hands she ripped the paper overalls open to her crotch. Nick stopped the matron when she moved to intervene. The same three cards were tattooed above the girl's pubic hair.

"Tarot's lucky Gypsy Spread," she sneered. "Funny how it became mine, too. The Devil met Death as the Hanged Man," she repeated.

"Gypsy Spread?"

"Three card reading. Telling the future," Karen said, shivering out of control.

Nick closed the window and draped his jacket over her shoulders. He eased the girl back in the chair and buttoned her up. Leaving the room, he returned with a blanket from the cooping loft. He tucked it around her waist, legs, and feet.

"That better?"

Karen nodded.

"Let's use this instead." From his shirt pocket he removed a folded sheet of paper. He spread it open on the table facing the girl. It was a page torn from
Jolly Roger.

"Who tattooed you?"

"Tarot," she said.

"And he carved the pentagrams into your back?"

Karen nodded.

"Did you let him?"

"He threatened to crush my head on the block with the sledge if I disobeyed him. He said he'd use magic powers to track me down if I ran away. He was weird. He was nuts. And I needed crack."

"Coke psychosis is as weird as it gets. Why'd the setup in the room mimic the Devil card? You and Terry were chained by the neck to a similar block."

"The Devil was Tarot's Significator. The card that stood for him. It means the challenge of repression, which Tarot said life dealt him. It also means bondage and enslavement. The life Tarot dealt me."

Nick tapped the Devil card on the table. "How do you read one of these?"

Karen's eye twitched and wandered as she spoke. "The batwings represent the power of darkness. The lowered torch means evil intent. The block's a half cube, Tarot said, cause what we know is limited if the occult's ignored. The Devil's hand is raised to signify black magic and destruction. The mark on his palm shows our ignorance. It's the zodiac sign for Saturn. Know what it means?"

"No," Nick said.

"Neither do I. 'That's why I'm up here and you're down there,' Tarot said."

"Down there?"

"On the floor. Chained at his feet. Tarot'd squat on the block while I sucked him off."

"Terry suck him, too?"

"No, just me. Tarot said I was his path to the Occult Realm. It has to be through a woman cause we got the hole."

Nick recalled Macbeth's comment at the autopsy. He was staring at the wax and occult pentagram scratched on Chloe's skin.
While still alive,
Gill had said,
she was used as a human altar in witchcraft rituals.

"How'd that work? Using you as a path?"

"Ever heard of Crowley?"

"The Satanist?"

"A guy named Fuller was Crowley's disciple. He designed a temple for the Beast. Fuller became a friend of Adolf Hitler. Tarot followed one of his designs."

Karen paused, hyperventilating.

"Slow and easy," Nick said. "Take your time."

"It shows a circle of candles around a triangle on the floor. Inside the circle is a man in hooded robes, and a woman with no clothes. The man's hands are raised toward another triangle in the air, which points up through the hole in Saturn's rings. Tarot said Magick is tantric. Sexual. It works through the uprush of male forces from the physical world, spearing the female circle that's the zodiac hole. The triangle was the head of his cock. The hole was me. That's why he tried to fuck me to death on the pentagram."

Rheum or tears trickled down the girl's cheeks. She poked a hand through Nick's jacket and wiped the wet away.

"Is that why Tarot injected his cock with cocaine?"

"The Devil's cock is
always
erect," she said through clenched teeth. "That's why he's the Devil." A sour smirk.
" 'Rosemary's Baby. The Exorcist.
That's me,' Tarot said. He only stopped fucking me when Tube Steak arrived. Made me get dressed to buy him off with a reading."

"You lost me," Nick said.

"So they could stab me!"

The girl began to cry, great heaving sobs. Nick moved a chair beside her and sat down. He put his arm around her and said quietly, "A little longer and you can go to juvie hall."

"Jesus, man. I gotta have a hit. Gimme crack and I'll—"

"You'll what, Karen? Let me kill you? Is that how far you'll go for a smoke? I said I'd help you and I mean it. The best thing I can do now is clean you out. Then we'll exorcize Tarot from your life. What happened this afternoon?"

The girl's teeth chattered as she struggled on. "Tube Steak supplied Tarot with drugs. He rode hog with the Headhunt-ers gang. Tarot paid him half up front for crack and blow. Said he'd put me and Terry on the street for the rest. Instead he chained us to the block so he could break through. Said he was leaving this shitty world for the Occult Realm. Cracked us up and boned me all night. Terry did the chant and worked his ass. The humping didn't stop till Tube Steak knocked. He wanted his money."

Karen was shaking like she had the d.t.'s. "Tarot tried to bullshit him with a read. Said there was better than money in the cards. Had Tube Steak stick me through my shirt, then ripped my top down to read the bleeding tattoos. Tube Steak was coked out, and started yelling demons possessed him. Shouted the reading was to blame. He nailed Tarot to the cross to lift the curse, cause Tarot said the Hanged Man was the sign of reversal. That's when you burst in."

Nick tapped the Devil card in front of them. "What does the pentagram between the horns mean?"

"I don't feel good."

"We're almost through. What does the upside down pentagram mean?"

"The five-point star's the Seal of Solomon." Karen broke out in a sweat. "It signifies the word made flesh and mind over matter. Pointing up is order. Pointing down confusion. Black Magick reigns through this card. The Devil unleashes our destructive will."

"This Devil's the same as the one on Tarot's wall."

"That's cause both are from the Rider Waite pack. Tarot mixed cards from different decks. He didn't like Waite's hooded Death on a horse. He preferred the Classic's skeleton with a scythe. Death means destruction clears the way for transformation. The past's removed from the future by the sweep of the blade. The end of the familiar leads to new beginnings."

"This Hanged Man" —Nick fingered the page from
Jolly Roger
—
"isn't the one on Tarot's wall."

"These three cards are from the Rider Waite deck. Tarot's Hanged Man is from Crowley's. He liked the foot as serpent, creator and destroyer, which works all . . ." Karen jumped. "IT MOVED!"

Her reaction was so sudden, Nick jumped, too.

"Easy, Karen."

"IT'S ALIVE!"

Eyes wide, she burst from the jacket, popping buttons, and slammed the Hanged Man hard with her fist. Sweat leaked from every pore as she cried, "TAROT'S BACK!"

The matron rounded the table and grabbed the spooked girl. Flailing her arms, Lake fought the woman and crack hallucinations. The matron dragged her kicking and screaming back to the mental cell.

Poor Karen,
Nick thought.
Just when I was getting the hang of this.

The Hanged Man mocked him from the tabletop.

Jolly Roger's
Significator.

11:40
P.M.

From hanged men Craven turned his attention back to hanged women. He drove from the city jail through pelting rain to the RCMP Forensic Lab at 5201 Heather. The powder monkeys' home was a mushroom-shaped building with lights still burning on the second floor. Nick cleared security and climbed the stairs, searching Biology Section until he found Bob George. The Staff Sergeant was at work in the Hairs & Fibres lab drying an exhibit under the fume hood. George had shed his Brioni suit for denims with Cree designs. Craven joined him as he placed the exhibit on the table. It was the oval fur ball found at the base of the totem under Zoe's dangling feet.

"The footprint at the scene was too far gone," George said. "The cast's size eleven, that's all we know. The only thing of interest Ident found is this."

Nick poked the fur ball on the table. "None of the techs knew what it is."

"You white guys don't spend enough time in the woods."

Under harsh fluorescent light, Ghost Keeper pulled the exhibit apart. Inside were two tiny skulls and many small bones.

"What is it?" Nick asked.

"An owl pellet," George said.

The Witching Hour

Midnight

. . . ink black until torchlit stalactites come into view, the steps chipped from the wall of a massive limestone cave, shadows lick up the stairs like tongues from the pit, half the floor of the cave below a black lagoon, beyond which a blowhole leads to lightning-lit sand. No crack of thunder, no bass of pounding waves, no whine of wind whistling overhead, just unnatural silence as down, down, down the nude procession snakes, past stalactites and stalagmites skull-joined like Siamese twins, into the bowels of the grotto where wooden monsters wait.