A Cruel Season for Dying (7 page)

“I’m not ready to say anything about this case.” He spoke mildly. “You can contact the Public Information Section. I’m sure
they’ll have a statement.”

He started the engine and backed out. She stood watching, as his car moved away and disappeared up the ramp. Her little ambush
had accomplished its purpose. News out of no news to feed tomorrow’s cycle. She ran the lead in her head:
In an interview yesterday Lieutenant James Sakura of the Special Homicide Unit did not deny a bizarre ritual aspect to the
recent murders of Metropolitan Ballet danseur Luis Carrera and David Milne, co-owner of a popular Alphabet City art gallery.
Sakura, however, refused comment on widespread speculation that his budding investigation may be dealing with a serial killer
targeting members of the city’s prominent gay community.

She smiled her satisfaction, tossing back her signature blond mane and tugging her short skirt into alignment. Whether he
liked it or not, Sakura was set to play the star in the little morality tale she was about to spin for the city’s hungry readers.
The problem for the lieutenant was that, this time out, he might prove to be no more than a shooting star, or the kind that
finally collapsed on its own brilliance. That crack of his about the department’s Public Information Section was a symptom
of his contempt not only for the press but for the way the game was played in general. An impressive clearance rate had so
far protected Sakura from the jealousy of his betters, but goodness and light could get you only so far when you operated
in a shark tank. And she, for one, was betting on the sharks.

James Sakura thought Dr. Simon Whelan looked like a gnome. The linguist was an aging scholar, sitting at an ancient desk behind
a
disorganized accumulation of books and papers. His shock of white hair was startling above almost transparent blue-gray eyes.
The single incongruity, tacked to the wall behind the professor’s desk, was an outof-date calendar displaying a smiling Vargas-like
beauty advertising Jose’s Cantina, El Paso, Texas. Sakura watched as the linguist’s untidy head bobbed against the backdrop
of the señorita’s ample breasts.

Whelan spoke directly to the black-and-white photographs of the crime scene walls. “No spaces between the letters.” He rotated
the shots toward Sakura, tapping a finger against one of the series of ash-drawn letters. “They’re words, freestanding words.”

“Not just random strings of letters?” Sakura looked at the photographs he’d examined a dozen times before.

“No, the letters follow graphotactic rules.” The professor leaned back into his chair. “Permitted sequences of letters. Vowels
occurring in appropriate places. Some fairly standard consonant patterns…. Say them, Lieutenant Sakura.”

Sakura read off the words that had been written over the victims’ beds.

Whelan’s laugh was electric. “They’re a mouthful but still pronounceable within the context of certain rules of the English
language.”

“What do they mean, Doctor?”

“Linguists are not magicians, Lieutenant Sakura.” Whelan shook his white head in a parody of modesty. “But I think we may
reasonably assume that the killer is an English speaker and that these foreign-sounding words are Anglicized versions of words
from another language, probably Indo-European or Semitic. The
k
and the
q
sounds, which we see here, frequently occur in both those language groups.” He paused, stopping the flutter of his birdlike
hands. “There is something else you might consider, Lieutenant. These words may have significance beyond their denotative
meaning. ‘
Kasyade. Jeqon
.’” Whelan literally sang the words.

Sakura waited.

“The
sound
of the words, Lieutenant. Perhaps it is the sound and not the meaning that is important. Especially if the words are attached
to some ritual.”

Sakura placed a folder next to the black-and-white shots of the walls. Although Whelan had been informed that his visit was
connected with the recent homicides, he’d purposely withheld the photographs of the victims’ bodies. Now he opened the file
and slid color prints of the two murdered men toward the language expert.

The reaction was surprise, as though the professor were wondering if the range of human behavior could support such conduct.
He frowned. “What besides murder is this man doing?” Then in answer to his own question, he blurted out, “Why, the devil’s
making angels!”

The cell phone sounded in Sakura’s jacket. He fished it out, flipped open the case. “Sakura,” he responded.

“We just found number three.” Kelly’s voice in his ear.

There was less street activity than might have been expected in front of an apartment building where murder had been committed
only hours before. A single patrol car and a crime lab van stood parked near the curb. The uniformed officer who’d remained
outside turned as an unmarked sedan pulled up, stopping in midstreet.

The man standing outside the corner bistro watched as a tall figure exited from the front seat, holding a badge aloft, his
identity obvious from media reports. In the failing sunlight his skin shone with the pale translucency of Asian flesh, his
thinness lightly masked by a navy top-coat he’d worn against an afternoon grown blustery and colder. His black hair was stylishly
cut, his eyes intent under delicate slashes of dark brow.

There was an elegant deliberateness, a sense of concentrated intelligence that marked the detective’s actions. One leather-gloved
hand pinned the badge to his coat, then reached to tame a maroon tie carelessly blown against the plane of his starched white
shirt. He glanced over his shoulder briefly, then turned his attention to the entrance of the building.

The man watched the detective mount the steps, his focus already moving into the interior, to what lay in the bedroom upstairs.
Murder had thrice been committed. He had upped the ante on Lieutenant James Sakura.

The third victim’s apartment, like the others, showed no evidence of a break-in. Sakura entered, thinking that there was terrible
irony in serial murder. With each death came another layer of impressions, a new set of clues. Hope that at last there would
be something that would lead to the killer. Yet nothing seemed different in Westlake’s apartment, except for
BARAKEL
written above the bed.

The meticulous order of the bedroom was the same. So was the nude body, the wings splayed like blades of scissors. As with
the first two victims, there was that quality that seemed to transcend death. He searched for something to ground the scene.
But nothing could anchor what was in this room to any world he understood. Westlake’s features were relaxed, almost beatific,
seeming to welcome what must have been a horrific death. The nude body appeared genderless, sterile, unviolated in what was
usually a sexually motivated crime.

Sakura reminded himself that the grotesque tableau was a map to the killer’s mind, a reaffirmation that the murderer himself
was a kind of victim, a slave to the complex fantasy that was driving him to do the things that he did. He stilled his own
mind, reducing his focus to the key questions: What had taken place here? Why had it happened the way it had? Who would have
committed these crimes for these reasons?

One of the techs, emerging from the bathroom with the black light, interrupted his thoughts.

“The guy’s real careful, Lieutenant. He’s not taking off the gloves. But I think he might have spent some time in the john
this go-round. Smears all over the countertop. Maybe some good enough partials on the mirror.”

Sakura nodded. It was a long shot, but clear prints sometimes came through latex. “Tell Murray to take plenty shots of that
bathroom,” he said. “Black-and-white and color. And—”

“Yeah, Lieutenant, I know. We’ll look for all the pubes.” The tech went back into the bathroom.

“Linsky shown up?”

Sakura turned at the sound of Lincoln McCauley’s voice. “He’s been notified.”

The chief came through the bedroom door, bent over the corpse. “This one gay too?”

“Unknown. Officer Sanchez is still questioning the friend who called it in.”

McCauley grunted. “Look at him. Pretty as a picture.”

“Mr. Westlake was a model.” Sakura followed the chief’s eyes back to the body on the bed. One thing was sure. There was little
gross physical difference among the three dead men. All had been small framed, fine-boned. And with the genitals tucked neatly
between the thighs, any one of them could have been mistaken for a particularly boyish female.

The chief stood up. His eyes leaked a predatory look his recently acquired polish couldn’t contain. His smile was nasty. “You’re
a hot item, Sakura. Of course the press is a whore. Can turn on you at any time.” He removed a cigar from the case he kept
in the inner pocket of his jacket and began working it between his teeth. “They’re calling our killer a serial. Targeting
gays. Talked about ritualized aspects in the murders.” He spoke around the cigar. “Read the
Post,
Sakura?”

“I saw it.”

“Have you now. Well, it seems you may have a leak you need to patch, Lieutenant.” He unplugged the cigar. “I’m out of here.
Call me after you hear from Linsky.”

Sakura watched McCauley’s back as he moved out of the room. He had no illusions about his relationship with the chief of detectives.
They didn’t like each other.

He walked over to one of the windows facing out onto the street. A taxi below had screeched to a halt, the driver shaking
his fist at a woman crossing against the light.

“Well, I’ll be damned, Lieutenant. If it ain’t ‘Miss Assistant D.A.’ herself.” Murray had poked his head out of the bathroom
just in time to catch Faith Baldwin jaywalking.

Impervious to the cold, she didn’t have on a coat, and Sakura watched her body glide inside the man-tailored suit as though
she wore nothing at all. A wisp of chestnut hair was momentarily trapped inside the frames of glasses she didn’t need, but
in true Baldwin style used only for effect.

“Think she’s a dyke?” The other tech joined them at the window.

“She’s got big enough balls. But I figure her for a nympho. Fire under all that ice.” Murray laughed, began reloading his
camera.

Sakura turned away from the window. Of one thing he was sure— Faith had balls, but she was no dyke. Their eight-month affair
more than five years ago was proof of that. It was a relationship both had agreed to keep secret, and Faith had been more
than discreet. In public, the assistant D.A. had made a show of barely tolerating him, her game of high indifference seeming
only to intensify what happened between them in bed. His fingers went to his wrist as he recalled the last time they’d made
love. Faith had used his own handcuffs on him. It had been a kind of insanity that had both frightened and excited him.

He looked up at the sound of her cool, uninflected voice. “What do we have here, Lieutenant Sakura?” Her green eyes, cool
too, met his straight on.

“Something quite unpleasant, Ms. Baldwin.”

“Such decorum, Lieutenant.” She unlocked her eyes and glanced over at Westlake’s corpse.