Authors: J. A. Kerley
Bliss.
Prestwick? Pretty, pretty Billyboy. That had been the finest event of Debro’s life: a single-edge razor blade outlining the face, tiny blood pearls rising from the incision like datura pushing from the ground. Debro’s hand closed into a fist as he felt the cup of flesh beneath Prestwick’s chin, hot and wet as his fingers burrowed beneath and …
Debro owned a face.
That was it, wasn’t it? You owned them. And the more you took from them, the more you owned.
It was time to understand what it was like to own one completely.
The lights had been turned off in the room and Patrick suspected he was being watched, his peripheral vision catching a shape in the small window in the door. But he couldn’t be certain the head-shape wasn’t a delusion. Sometimes visions rose in his head: snakes on the floor, balloons in the air, flames skittering across the linoleum.
The door opened; he’d been right: Scott entered. Patrick forced himself to stare at the ceiling, appearing drugged, dulled, sunk into delirium. A floorboard squeaked and Patrick inadvertently turned to the sound, his face rising to meet eyes looking down.
The eyes locked.
“I think it’s time to hit you again, bitch,” Scott said. He wore only a jock strap and crouched and waved his hand in front of Patrick’s eyes. Patrick made himself stare dead ahead.
Hit.
It could only be an injection.
Scott straightened and sipped from a can of beer. Patrick tried to move his arms, felt them twitch and stutter, the control erratic; no way he could take the muscular Scott, a man in full control of his mind and his body.
And if Patrick revealed his awareness, what would happen? There was but one course of action: accept the dose and hope the countering pharmaceuticals retained some blunting power.
Scott passed his chair, smacking the back and setting it into rocking motion, then disappeared out the door. He returned within two minutes, his right hand holding a syringe and a fifty-cc vial of dark brown glass. In his left was a small leather bag. A bouquet of green balloons bobbed behind Scott as he walked, popping with every step. When they popped they left black smoke roiling in the air.
They’re just hallucinations,
Patrick told himself, again tapping his head against the floor and letting a strand of spittle fall from his mouth.
Scott set the syringe and vial in the lounger and approached Patrick, the leather bag bouncing from hand to hand.
“You’ve been a bad girl,” he chided, looking at Patrick. “You were mean.”
Patrick’s lips bubbled at the ceiling and he slowly thudded his head against the floor. He had no recollection of ever seeing Derek Scott before he came into the hospital, a supposed victim. Never.
Scott set the leather bag next to Patrick and strode casually to the chair, beside it the sixteen-ounce Budweiser. “I’ve figured it out, Patty,” he said, picking up the bag and tapping its contents into his hand. “I’m gonna help you prepare for your exam.”
A hand appeared in front of Patrick’s face. It was holding a blade as curved and as wicked as the tip of a scorpion’s tail. A linoleum knife. “You’re interested in anatomy, right?” Scott said. He laughed and reached for the vial, loading the syringe and setting it on the floor beside the vial.
“Just some locust for the muscles,” Scott said, bending over Patrick with his finger on the plunger. “I want you nice and soft and ready to learn all about insides.”
Patrick saw a luer lock IV syringe. He waited until the needle was sliding into his thigh to mime a spasm, his right arm jerking in what seemed an involuntary motion, catching the syringe and snapping off the needle in his leg.
“Fuck!” Scott screamed, jumping back from Patrick’s flailing limbs. His face screwed up in rage and he threw the useless syringe at Patrick and stormed from the room.
He’s getting another needle
, Patrick thought.
Move!
Patrick pushed himself up on his hands and started toward the chair. Fighting to make his flaccid limbs move in unity …
left,
dammit, now
right …
Come on, move …
He crawled to the brown vial beside Scott’s can of beer and tried to pick it up, but his
fingers had stopped working.
Patrick put his head on the floor and used it as a backstop, wedging the vial between his index and middle fingers.
Hang on …
He lifted the vial and shakily poured several cc’s into Scott’s beer, hoping his eyes were telling him the truth and the liquid was entering the can.
“WHAT ARE YOU DOING!”
Scott’s voice filled the room, bouncing between walls. Patrick’s hand froze, the vial stuck between his fingers. Scott’s face was golden and glowing. A broad grin came to his face. Scott strode to Patrick …
And dissolved into a pile of black cats. They howled and skittered across the floor and ran up the walls, disappearing as they reached the ceiling.
A hallucination,
Patrick realized, his heart hammering in his ears. He looked at the can and saw dark beads of toxic liquid at the opening, a giveaway to the tampering. An army of cockroaches appeared on Patrick’s arm but he ignored their clacking, metallic legs and dropped a shoulder, rolling back to his original position.
He resumed the slack-mouth staring, trying to ignore the insects crawling across his body. The door opened again and a second Scott entered, naked and aroused and bearing a new syringe and a pair of handcuffs. It took seconds to lock the cuffs in place. Patrick felt the needle sting his thigh. “Fifteen minutes,” Scott whispered, setting the glowing linoleum cutter on Patrick’s belly. “Then we’ll have an anatomy lesson, Patrick. Just you and me.”
Scott retreated to the chair. He picked up the beer can, rolled it between his palms. Held it toward Patrick like offering a toast, tipped it back …
And drank.
“Think,” I said to Gershwin. “Where would Scott be?”
We were on the streets, too restless to sit at the department. We had every damn invisible wire in hand except the one that led us to Scott’s lair. Night was falling, and what would normally seem a pleasant orange cast to the sky seemed like a blanket of fear turning darker by the moment.
My phone was in my lap and I kept wishing it would sound, a cop saying he’d just spotted Derek Scott’s 2012 maroon Explorer. We’d been looking for a silver sedan, possibly with a bike rack. Scott had moved us like chess pieces.
“How would Scott acquire property?” Gershwin asked as I turned on to I-95 and headed south. “Without using his name?”
“He might rent it,” I said. “Pay enough and there’s no questions asked.”
“There’s a risk the owner might show up to check out the property. Scott is risk-adverse, Big Ryde.”
Gershwin was right. I replayed his relationship with Gary. A thought hit.
“Gary’s cloud data. He kept business dealings there.”
I saw the nearest exit and took it, pulling into a clothing-store parking lot. I dialed Sparrow at computer forensics.
“Yo,” she said. “S’up?”
“The download from Ocampo’s cloud account. There were some business records with the videos, right?”
I heard her scratching through files. “Usual stuff, tax records and whatnot. Inventory. Plus some property papers.”
“More than the shop?”
A minute of keystrokes. She told me what she found.
I hung up and looked at Gershwin. “Eleven months back Gary Ocampo bought a building in Kendall. Two stories, almost three thousand square feet. How far is Kendall?”
“Fifteen minutes from here,” Gershwin said. “But I know a shortcut.”
Scott left the room and returned with another beer, sitting in his chair and playing with himself as he studied Patrick. His hand made an ugly squeaking sound as it rose and fell, an aural hallucination, Patrick knew. He also knew the anti-toxin was overcome, the floor now glowing as if lit from below. Lightning had started crackling against a far wall. Sickly purple clouds sped across the ceiling.
Derek Scott rose from his chair, fifteen feet tall. He lifted the knife.
“Time to study anatomy,” he said, his voice coming from inside Patrick’s head. Scott pulled the cushion from the lounger and propped Patrick’s head high, Patrick staring at his chest, his open and bare belly. Scott’s hand closed around the linoleum cutter’s wooden handle, its wicked curve echoing the curve in Scott’s smile as Scott made the blade draw circles in front of Patrick’s eyes. The blade left trails, like a sparkler.
“Wonder what we’ll see first …”
Scott paused. His eyes flashed to a corner. His head cocked, like hearing a distant voice.
“Gary?” he said. “
Gary
?”
Scott stood and walked tentatively to the corner and waved his hand in the air, like trying to touch something only he could see. He turned slowly, looking between Patrick and the can of beer on the floor, the vial at its side.
“
YOU BITCH!
”
Scott screamed. “I’LL
GUT
YOU!”
Lightning crackled through the room as Scott stumbled toward Patrick, the knife glowing and buzzing in the sparking air. Scott dropped to his knees at Patrick’s side, his face black, his mouth dripping fire. He slipped the knife under Patrick’s chin.
NO
Patrick croaked, trying to roll away as the room spun like a wheel and the glowing blade burrowed toward his heart. PLEEEEASE NO …
Lighting exploded again. Two blinding flashes, like twin suns exploding. Waves of thunder spun the room so fast it turned inside-out.
Time stopped.
Took a breath.
Re-started. Patrick blinked his eyes open to the sound of wind blowing inward from the door, turned his head into the wind. Superman stood at the door, his cape flapping in the breeze, his dark hair rippling, and smoke drifting from a hole in his palm. He lifted from the floor with a
swoosh
and flew to Patrick. But it wasn’t Superman’s face above the massive cartoon shoulders, it was Detective Ryder’s face.
“I’ve got to get you to a hospital, brother,” Superman Ryder said in a voice that sounded like trumpets. “Hang on.”
Clouds surrounded Patrick and he could not tell if he was rising or falling.
Four days passed and I’d actually gotten some sleep. Derek Scott was chained to a hospital bed, recovering from datura and two gunshot wounds in his abdomen. After healing he would go to trial and thereafter to a maximum-security prison, where he would no doubt wreak sexual havoc on handsome young men gone afoul of the law.
Patrick White would be the key witness at Derek Scott’s trial. We had enough to lock Scott up and White’s testimony would let us throw away the key. Patrick had an inch-deep, two-inch-long slit in his upper chest, but would soon recover. He had re-scheduled his missed exam and I knew he’d be a superb nurse practitioner.
Gershwin and the lovely young woman who worked the desk at the morgue went to Memphis to soak up a few days of blues and barbecue. I ordered him to visit the National Civil Rights Museum, saying it would be one of the most profound experiences of his life. After that, I said, go to Gus’s for fried chicken.
And me? I was looking toward a horizon where two blues met, the back-lit blue of the sky, the wet-jewel blue of the sea. I heard Ava and Vivian speaking behind and above me, both marveling at the odd stroke of Fate that had made my brother an acquaintance of the incoming pathologist at the morgue. According to my brother’s new backstory, he had passed through Mobile on business at the time Ava was there and I had introduced them. They had reconnected when he’d recently learned – through me – that Ava was in Miami.
Jeremy Ryder’s false history wove through my false history like the graveyard rose of Sweet William and the briar of Barbry Allen, however you want to translate that.
I heard a door close and Jeremy sat beside me, a fresh glass of lemonade in his hand. He wore a linen safari shirt and tan cargo shorts that looked pressed, a creamy straw Panama hat providing shade. We’d been discussing the cases, and I’d detailed the video where the pair had met.
Jeremy had been delivering his commentary, which he gleefully continued now that he’d refreshed his glass. “Scott recognized vulnerability in Gravy from the moment he gave his sad little
Mummy Hates Me
speech,” my brother grinned. “Scotty probably wondered, What can I get from this whimpering doughball?”
“Everything he wanted, I think. Scott even adapted his intro speech to align with Gary’s. He drew him in.”
“Scott was a predator who sought out weakness, Gravy a sad widdle chubbins with mommy issues and repressed anger. Needy-boy Gravy bared his adipose heart to Scott, including little dead Donnie, his need to bare his boobies in Rio, and his magical ways.”
“All of which Scott used from day one.”
“Scott’s an inventive sort. The only problems were building his secret lair – which he loved doing, by the way, exercise while he dieted – then going to Te-jas to empty a casket. What do you think Derek-boy did with little Donnie, Carson?”
“He was in a freezer in Scott’s garage.”
Even my brother looked surprised at that one.
“Stage set, the abductions begin,” Jeremy continued. “Scott leaving spermy evidence everywhere. But in the data banks it’s listed as Gary Ocampo’s juice. And folks like you –” he winked – “are looking for the Invisible Man.”
“It gets weirder,” I said. “Scott moved to Miami twenty-seven months ago, where, you’d think, he crossed paths with the victims. But none recall seeing him. Only when we showed them Gary Ocampo’s photo – the real version – did the memories kick in: Brian Caswell vaguely remembers picking on Gary during a performance. Dale Kemp made some cutting remarks at a theater, Harold caught Gary spying on him in high school and broadcast the incident, making Gary a butt of widespread joking. Prestwick and White jerked Gary around in a bar years ago, an incident with a mirror. Eisen also gave him a pretty bad verbal rough-up in the same time frame.”
Jeremy absorbed the information and nodded. “Little weepy Gravy tells Derek tales of humiliation. Crazy Derek absorbs every detail of Gravy’s woe and adds it to his own, then puts on his magic sharing hat and goes a-hunting for the nasty trolls who poor-mouth sweet widdle fat boys. Think it’s coincidence Derek tracked down the slimmest, prettiest little meanies?”