Brides Of The Impaler (21 page)

Everybody laughed. “You’re loony,” Paul said, “but I still love you.”

“Thanks.”

“That’s a riot,” Britt said. “Last night you thought the Noxious Nun was in your basement!”

“It seems so. Blame my subconscious mind.”

“Just so long as you’re all right,” Paul said. “But until further notice, the basement’s off-limits.”

“Oh, don’t worry. I don’t need any more experiences like that.”

“Just the same,” Britt asked, “how are you feeling?”

“Like an ass, but aside from that and being a little tired, I feel all right.”

“Come on, everybody, let’s clear out of here so she can get dressed,” Britt ordered.

“Jess and I have to get back to the office anyway,” Paul said. “But if you need anything, call.”

“Thanks, honey,” Cristina bid and kissed him.

As Britt herded them out, she said, “I’ll hang around a while. We can go get lunch.”

“Great. I’m starved.”

The door didn’t quite close all the way. As Cristina dressed she could hear everyone talking in the foyer.

“Mystery of the day solved,” Jess joked. “Mold in the basement. Say, Paul. You ought to sue the diocese for selling you contaminated property!”

Paul and Jess roared laughter.

Cristina shook her head, and continued to spruce herself up. In the closet, though, some of her dresses seemed to be disarranged, as if they’d been rehung in haste. One hanger was empty. Was something missing?
Stop imagining
things
, she ordered herself. Next, in the bathroom, she was brushing her hair when something unconscious caught her eye.

What
…

There, in the mirror’s reflection. Cristina turned very
slowly and saw that the Noxious Nun figure Bruno had given her was sitting on a vanity shelf behind her. The figure’s fanged smile seemed to harass her, the toy-sized bowl of blood held as if it were being offered to her.

Cristina was certain she’d taken the figure upstairs a day or so ago, to display it with her other figurines.

She had absolutely no recollection of bringing it back down here.

What to do, what to do
?
Rollin fretted. He sat in the chancel of his own empty church, not praying so much as worrying. Last night, from his window at the Ketchum Hotel, he’d seen enough to spark an escalating dread. Through his voyeur’s binoculars, not only had he witnessed Cristina Nichols masturbating unabashed—twice—he’d seen at least one other woman in the house, and—

I’m pretty sure I’ve seen that woman before
…

One of those homeless girls who’d always seemed to gravitate toward the house. Another thing he’d noted over time was this: it had been going on for almost a year, as though the house might be preparing them for something, coaching them.
Like the house has recruited its own attendants
, he abstracted.

Rollin only knew what he had been warned.

If it’s true…what in God’s name can I do about it, especially
if I don’t even have access to the house anymore?

The priest errantly touched his ring. After Cristina Nichols had left, Rollin identified the woman he had seen in the studio window as one he often saw scrounging the streets, a dilapidated urchin still carrying around a ghost of a long-faded prettiness.
Pink, bulky glasses,
blondish hair, an orange halter top lately
, he thought.
Who is
she? And those other ones she runs about with?
At least they
appeared better nourished than when he first began to notice them. He could only imagine who might be manipulating them…

Rollin walked to the end of the narthex of the church; he opened the massive front doors and peeked out. The annex house stood bright in sunlight, its windows shining. How many times had he peeped in those windows? Two well-dressed men laughed as they came down the steps—a broad-shouldered, dark-haired man, and the other goateed, with longer hair—and got into an expensive sports car.
I wonder which one was Paul Nasher?
As the car drove away, a stunning woman with shoulder-length and almost-black hair waved good-bye from the annex house’s threshold.
A friend of Cristina’s, I guess
…For a fraction of a second the woman made eye contact with Rollin.
Damn!
He smiled feebly, stepped back, and closed the door.

He hadn’t seen Cristina since her masturbatory bout last night in the studio. Rollin decided he’d keep the expensive room at the Ketchum for a few more nights. Surveillance was important but so far it had yielded little.

Echoes of footsteps clattered as he walked back down the darkened nave. He crossed himself at the altar, though his mind wasn’t particularly close to God at the time.
The
homeless woman with the glasses
, he reflected. He knew that he’d seen her in the house, and if she’d found a way in, so must have the others.
But how?
he wondered.
How are they
getting in? And from where?
These were the questions that vexed him.

Perhaps today he’d stroll the streets and keep an eye out. But his stomach ached with the next thought: the certainty that he’d have to find a way to enter the house and find out how they were getting in.

Even if it means breaking into the place myself
…

Vernon felt dissolute, actually wobbly as he came down the steps of police headquarters on Madison. The yelling still echoed in his ears. Behind him he frowned at the infamous One Police Plaza as it loomed in its grandiosity, while the actual HQ building he’d just left looked more like him: old and weathered. Slouch picked him up in the unmarked in the small half-court out front.

“I probably won’t be able to sit down,” Vernon said when he opened the door.

“What?”

“The commissioner just gnawed my ass so hard, I don’t think I have one anymore.”

Slouch laughed. “He was probably on the rag. I heard he gets that way. But it couldn’t have been that bad.”

Vernon slid in and sighed. “I thought he was gonna have a stroke he was yelling so loud. There were veins sticking out at his temples. All I know is I’ve got a sergeant in good standing killing herself twenty feet from my office and a suspect in custody dead by
impalement
—a
homeless
woman—two days after
another
homeless woman was found dead by impalement. And I’ve got evidence of a third person in the room at the same time but when the PC asks me who the third person was, I don’t have an answer. ‘What are your leads?’ he asks, and the only thing I can say is a quartet of still more homeless women who stole some Christmas tree stands and whittling knives from a fuckin’ hardware store. I’ve never felt so inept in my life. I’m supposed to be on the ball but right now I’m
under
it. I wouldn’t blame him if he transferred me to the impound lot.”

“Come on.” Slouch tried to sound positive. He whipped into traffic, passed Foley Square, and turned up Centre Street. “It’s a fucked-up case. Everybody gets ’em.”

“A fucked-up case?” Vernon grimaced like someone with gas. “The PC calls it an ‘unacceptable deficiency of
protocol and professional foresight.’ All I know is we have to find those other girls on the video or I might as well turn in my papers.”

“Can’t help you now, How,” Slouch said. “I’ve got court.” He pulled into the criminal court complex. “You wanna take the car?”

“No. Drop me. I’ll take the subway back to the precinct.”

Vernon got out and allowed the walk to Varick Street to clear his head. He walked as if with blinders, distraction leaving him scarcely aware of where he was. He took the One Line and got out at the Lincoln Center stop. When he ascended up from the platform, a row of homeless sat against the first building, some squawking crazily, others just sitting there with halos of flies circling their heads. One of them, a woman, looked up with eyes whose whites had turned to the color of cigarette ash. “Can you spare a couple bucks, Officer?” she asked.

Vernon pretended not to hear, and high-stepped away.
I
must be wearing a sign
. Brazen graffiti besmirched the polished stone below a bank’s front windows. One scrawl read
Z-MEN RULE
but was X’d out, while another read
BUY
ROCK FROM THE KINGS
.
Hang them all
, Vernon thought bitterly, but then he chuckled.
Or better yet, impale
them. No one would sell drugs if we impaled the dealers in
public
. His distraction focused down without conscious effort as he neared 69
^th
and Columbus but when he spied the hot dog vendor, his awareness engaged. He was scanning alleys and passersby.
Where are they?
he thought. He took out copies of the prints, studying them as he walked. The most prominent of the three remaining thieves was the girl with glasses. Even in the grainy print, they looked like pink horn rims, like a child might wear.
Probably found them in
the garbage and they worked
. He could tell the woman was missing teeth, for she was grinning in the freeze-frame, boxes of several unassembled Christmas tree stands under her arm.
The nuttiest case of my career
…

An upcoming throng nearly overwhelmed him; it made Vernon realize he no longer functioned at the same rapid pace as most New Yorkers. He waited for the moving crowd to divide around him, then found himself standing in front of the vendor. Today he wore a New York Giants hat and a Jets jersey. “Hot dog, Officer?” he asked, cigar stub jittering. “On the house.”

Vernon wilted.
Made again
. “How did you know?”

The stocky vendor laughed. “I saw you yesterday busting that bum-chick, you and your buddy who needs a haircut.”

Bum-
chick
, Vernon thought.
I guess that’s what we reduce
them to
. “I’ll take a dog, thanks. With kraut, please. Oh, but first—” He thrust forward the hard copies. “You’ve seen these women around?”

The vendor barely looked at the pictures. “Yeah, yeah, your guys have already shown those to me. I see ’em every now and then, every other day, maybe.” But the man’s amusement was plain. “With all the crime in this city? Why waste time with a few bum-chicks?”

“They impaled a woman on a wooden pole,” Vernon said automatically, then regretted it.

The man laughed. “Jesus! Can’t have that!”

Probably thinks I’m bullshitting…and I wish I was
. “You seen any of these girls today?”

“Naw, don’t think so. But you know, I see a lot of people. During a rush I ain’t gonna notice.”

“Sure.” Vernon gave him his card. “Next time you see them, call that cell number. I’ll give you a hundred bucks right out of my wallet.”

“No shit?”

“No shit.”

The vendor eyed the card, nodding. “Awright.”

Vernon took the piled-high hot dog wrapped in foil. “Thanks.”

“That’s Sabrett’s. I ain’t like some of these other guys who say they’re Sabrett’s but they ain’t.”

“I believe it.” Vernon pointed to the card. “Call that number. I’m serious about the hundred.”

“You must want these bum-chicks bad.”

Vernon stared as if at a bombed building. “More than anything you can imagine,” he said and walked away.

The first bite told him the hot dog was not Sabrett’s.
Tastes more like one of those generic chicken dogs
. But he wasn’t about to complain. Suddenly a figure startled him, a raddled woman who smelled bad.

“Hey, mister. If you don’t eat all of that, can I have the rest?”

Vernon’s eyes locked.
Not one of mine
, he knew instantly. The woman stood short and squat, oddly wearing a wool scarf. Rotten tennis shoes were wrapped up in sheets. A baggy pea-green shirt looked streaked with old vomit. He thought of showing her the pictures but,
If she knows
them, she might tip them off
. For some reason, being so close to the woman made him nervous. He gave her the rest of the hot dog and a five-dollar bill, then strode off.

The street was so crowded he had to walk along the buildings to stay out of the way. He wasn’t quite sure what snagged his attention, though, when he stopped in front of one store. SPIKE’S COMIC EMPORIUM, the glass read. Then he stared at the glass and caught the small colorful mini-poster behind it. IN STOCK! CADAVERETTES! Vernon stooped, squinted. It was a promotional poster, showing several cute but morbid figurines all in a row. Then,
Cadaverettes
, he remembered. The word had been imprinted on the bottom of the doll they’d found in Virginia Fleming’s pocket…

He flinched at the bell that clanged when he pushed through the front door. Shelves of comics occupied the front, while toys and shirts were in back. “Where are these Cadaverette things?” he asked the man at the checkout who looked to be Vernon’s age but had spiked blond hair and a leather vest.

“Aisle Four,” he said without even looking at Vernon. “The new shipment just came in, and we also got a few Plastic Surgery Botchies back.”

Vernon felt duped. He shouldered through high, labyrinthine aisles, sniffling at the store’s mustiness. Rows and rows of action figures, dolls, and figurines—some quite elaborate—clogged the shelves. He dragged his vision along. “Gurl-Goyles, Fantasmic Fishies, Living Dead Dolls, Verotik World,” he recited. Then, “Ah. Here they are.”

Boxes five inches high and three thick sat on end, each with cellophane windows displaying dolls that smiled in spite of grievous wounds. CADAVERETTE #2, read one box, Y-SECTIONED WANDA, and inside stood a cutesy figurine of a grinning nude girl whose pallid thorax was marked by stout black stitches—presumably surgical staples—in the fashion of the autopsist’s Y-incision. Vernon couldn’t guess what market appeal might exist for such novelties; some of the dolls were actually scary, but all at least unsettling in their amalgamation of grotesqueness and whimsy. A row of larger boxes contained four figures in each: Headless Helen, Hypothermia Harriet, Gutshot Glenn, and Floater Frank.
That’s the one Virginia Fleming
had
, Vernon recognized of Gutshot Glenn. The very idea puzzled him.
I guess I’m just an out-
of-
it old fuck
, he thought.
Somebody MUST be buying these things—there’re shelves and
shelves of them
…Another section with a similar style boasted PLASTIC SURGERY BOTCHIES. More of the same but a different theme. Tummy-Tucked Tina sported a horrendously mishandled abdominal augmentation; the lower half of Botox Bonnie’s face was all inflated lips.
Jeeeeeesus
, Vernon thought. Then:
Why am I looking at this
stuff?
It was only coincidence that one such figurine was found in a decedent’s pocket.

“You must be into the Nichols stuff,” said the spiked proprietor. He flapped Vernon a large, shiny card.

“Nichols?”

The clerk seemed half-offended that Vernon had questioned the name. “Cristina Nichols. Right now she’s the hottest name in novelty figurines, created the Cadaverettes that you asked about.” He gestured to the card. “We’ll be getting the first four figures in her
Evil
Church
line in a few days, but if you want any, you better preorder. They’re almost gone.”

Vernon didn’t know what the
hell
this guy was talking about. He looked at the card…

Suddenly his blood felt like ice water.

It had to be coincidence. Of course. Nevertheless, the first thing he noticed on the card were wavy black, green, and red lines, ribbonlike, floating behind four figurines of a similar style as the Cadaverettes he’d just been appraising. CRISTINA NICHOLS PRESENTS: EVIL CHURCH CREEPIES! read the top of the glossy card. Four grotesque dolls were shown, all portraying some sort of Gothic church motif.

The first figure was a nun.

Vernon had to drag his sentience back, while still eyeing the nun and the wavy lines. “This some kind of promotional thing?”

“Right,” said Spiked Hair. “It’s Nichols’s brand-new line, and it’s making serious waves. If you want any of the first run, like I said, you better preorder.” Then the guy went back to the register.

Coincidence, yes, but almost too uncanny.
Black, green,
and red
, Vernon thought in a drone,
just like the markers at
the crime scenes
…