Darkness of the Soul (5 page)

“Oh, fuck it. Gimmie one of those.”

Parker nodded and shot the pack across the table. “Where’s my coffee then?”

“Screw coffee. I need the nicotine. So tell me.” Drakanis rocked the chair back, propped himself against the table with one knee, and watched as the smoke curled between the two of them, trying to ignore the faces he swore he could see blooming in it.

“Screw the coffee? C’mon, man, I come all the way out here, all dressed up—”

“Yeah, what’s up with that anyway?”

Parker muttered to himself, ashing into the saucer and shaking his head. “Tony’s got a stick up his ass again, decided to push me down when I nagged him a little too hard about something. I’m riding with Perez this week. He says, ‘Hi,’ by the by.”

“Awww. How sweet.” Drakanis’s vision was becoming slightly blurred, and his head had gone nice and swimmy; it was almost worth quitting smoking just to get the buzz back when you started again, in his opinion.

“Yeah, yeah, sweet as sugar and as lickable as your mother, Mikey. Anyway, I came out here special just for you. Least you can do is get me a damn cup of coffee. I gave you my last smoke even! So, coffee first, then I talk. Maybe.”

Parker gave him a serene smile, while he sat there still trying to glare and letting ash fall on the floor to join the rest of the crap. Gina’d been a neat freak, but he himself wasn’t much in the cleaning department since those days. He finally got up and filled a pair of cups, looking sullen and petulant. He could feel things sharpening in his mind, old tools gone to rot that were now eager to be put to use again, no matter his apparent feelings and attitude.

“There. Coffee. Talk.”

Parker took his time about it, sniffing at it in his best impersonation of a wine connoisseur and then sipping it daintily, pinky thrust out and all. Finally, he set the cup down and sighed.

“It’s been three years, man. You need to—”

“Don’t tell me what I do or don’t need, Vince. Get to it. I’m in. You’ve got me. I want it. Whatever you want to hear, just don’t give me a goddamn lecture. Get on with it.”

Shaking his head and snuffing the cigarette in a puddle of slopped coffee, Parker let the matter drop.
For
now,
he reminded himself.
It
ain’t
healthy
the
way
he
lives,
and
you
know
it.
He did indeed, but he also felt like there wasn’t much he could do for the man; Mikey’d either snap out of it, or he wouldn’t. Maybe giving him something to do, something tied to that old mess, would help. That was the idea anyway.

“All right, check it out. Two weeks ago, couple of old fags—s’ what I think they were anyway, and who gives a shit, they’re dead anyway and I ain’t hurting their feelings none—Nathaniel Boris and Roget Deway—and with names like that? I mean, seriously—stop in this little pawnshop and find this picture they just gotta have. So they dicker, they deal, they whine, they cream themselves and pay full price anyway, they want it that bad. With me so far?”

Drakanis felt his chest tightening and tried to convince himself it was due to the smoke and the effort not to cough, but he knew better. Parker had already told him what was stolen from the death scene, so it shouldn’t have come as a surprise, but how the old guys—fags or not—had managed to get their hands on it bothered him, because it was basically the same way Gina’d ended up with it.

If
he
tells
me
what
I
think
he’s
going
to,
I’m
going
to
go
insane.
No
other
option
really.
I
don’t
want
to
hear
this,
don’t
want
to
know
this,
and
I
don’t
have
to
if
I
don’t
want
to.
Part of him decided to prove it was being helpful by pointing out that most people thought he was pretty much insane anyway, but Drakanis shoved it down. It was no time to listen to drivel like that and better to put the brain to work on the problem at hand, whether or not it was the kind that’d force him to act on such a promise. He just nodded at Parker and then got back up from the table. He started banging cabinets and shoving odds and ends aside.

“Keep talking. I need something.”

“All right. So they take it home, hang it up, fuck for celebration, I dunno. Doesn’t matter. Week goes by, maybe two—the codgers paid cash and got it down at Eddie’s, and you know that bastard doesn’t bother with little things like receipts, not with half the shit he’s got in there, so we’re not entirely sure on the time line—they think it’s beautiful, it’s wonderful, best piece of shit artwork they’ve had in the house for decades. Then, two nights ago, boom. The maid shows up, finds ’em in the living room, painting gone, along with a few choice pieces of the old farts’ anatomy.”

Drakanis returned to the table, dropped an unopened pair of cigarette packs along with a lighter on top, and then ripped into one. He watched Parker through the haze of smoke.

“I thought you quit.”

“I did. Seems like a good time to start again. Help yourself.”

Parker shrugged and did as he was told. After giving himself a moment to savor the smoke, he rolled his shoulders and got on with it.

“All right, so there we are. We’ve got two old codgers, all cut up—one missing his dick, his left ear, and his right eye; the other with his hands gone and his spine split right up the middle. One wall that had such a
lovely
picture hanging on it just yesterday, the maid assures us, is now bare, with a bloody handprint where the damned thing used to hang.”

Parker saw Drakanis take in a breath, as if about to speak up, and raised one hand in a “hang on” gesture.

“Not the perp’s. One of the fogies. Found him slumped under that spot; the shrinks think he was trying to stop the shithead from taking his pretty little painting.” He blew out a disgusted note and then muttered under his breath. “Fucking fags.”

Drakanis blew smoke out in a hacking cough, managing to sneak words in between the wheezes. “Doesn’t matter… and you know it. They were dead anyway, if it is the same guys.”

Parker shrugged. “Prob’ly, yeah. Doesn’t mean the old fuck shoulda tried to stop ’em. It’s just a painting, and a god-awful ugly one at that.”

Drakanis returned the shrug with one of his own and got up to refill the cups with more sludge. Parker stifled a wince; he loved the man to death, but his coffee was only slightly better than the mud and bird shit they had back at the station. Still, at least Drakanis was doing
something
besides sitting and grieving, which had to be considered something of an improvement. Drakanis returned, sat down, and resumed his former attentive pose, actually looking as though a bit of the old interest was back.

“Anyway. So that’s our starting point. We got two corpses, no blood except in that room, a missing painting that we can verify is the same one stolen from your place, nothing else missing, no motive, no enemies, no nothing. Both corpses mutilated. Nobody saw anything; nobody heard anything.”

Drakanis cracked his neck and slumped in his chair as he sipped his coffee. He sat that way for a while, and Parker let him, giving him time to digest the story and to ask the question Parker was certain he would ask. His patience was rewarded.

“How sure are you it’s the same one?”

Parker grinned, not disappointed at all, and reached into his pocket. He flicked a Polaroid across the table and then finished smoking his cigarette while Drakanis studied it.

Still
the
ugliest
thing
I’ve
ever
seen,
Drakanis thought. And it was; to Drakanis, the thing had always just looked like a bunch of red and brown lines, radiating out from a central blackness. He’d never really cared for black canvas work, and black canvases with nothing but crappy lines on them didn’t really improve that opinion any. The one look was enough, but he still stared at it for several minutes, searching for some small difference, some sign that this wasn’t Gina’s painting, that this was some other piece of shit art, a knockoff, a lithograph, something that didn’t tie this crime to his own loss.

If there was a difference, he wasn’t seeing it. Finally, he dropped the photo back to the table, where it seemed to glare at him like some monster’s eye, the fucking Eye of Sauron staring at him. After a minute of that, he turned it over and then turned his gaze back to Parker.

“Where’d you get that?”

“Toldja, they were a couple of art fags or some shit. They’ve got piles of photos like that, piles more of hand-drawn copies, and a vault somewhere with artist’s representations of their collection. They didn’t have it long enough to get it into the other records, but there’s like eight Polaroids of the damn thing in their desk.”

“And that doesn’t strike you as odd? The asshole took the receipt—went through Gina’s purse and took the damn receipt for the thing—making it like it didn’t even exist in the first place, when he hit us.”

“Maybe he didn’t have time, or maybe he didn’t care.”

Drakanis could tell there was something else Parker was holding back, some little detail that he wasn’t sharing for whatever reason, but he didn’t really feel like pushing it yet. He would, but that was for later, and he was sure that his friend would have a good reason for keeping the information back. He sighed again and snuffed the cigarette, trying to ignore the smell. He’d looked too long at the photo, and the filter was burning. Then he leaned back in his chair again.

“All right. Honesty time, old pal. You really think we can do something about this? You really think this is the same guy that did for Gina, and you really think anything we do is gonna stick? Don’t lie; I’ll fucking know if you lie. Just tell me straight.”

Parker crossed his arms in front of his chest and dropped his head. Some might have thought he was sleeping, but he was actually thinking, and thinking hard. He felt his friend deserved at least that much, that he give his simple questions quite possibly the most thought he’d ever given anything in his life.

Do
I
think
so?
Do
I
really?
Or
am
I
grasping
at
straws?

Parker was pretty sure he wasn’t, but pretty sure wasn’t going to cut it this time. In the end, it was the painting that did it. He’d known it was trouble—what his mother would have called a bad juju—since the first time he laid eyes on it. It was like one of those portraits that followed you around with its eyes except that it didn’t have eyes. Creepy paintings like that quit being creepy when you were out of the room, but not this one. The one time Parker had been over when the painting had been there, he had felt an unpleasant thrumming, the kind you got when you stood too close to a live wire, running through his whole body, no matter where he’d been in the house. He got the same vibe from the Polaroid and a tinge of it from the old farts’ house. That was what finally pushed him over, that sense of evil and dread. He rocked forward again, lowered his arms, and nodded.

“Yeah. I think we can get the fucker, Mikey. I really do.”

Drakanis pulled out a fresh cigarette and lit it. He remained silent for a time. Then he responded, deadpan. “Better not be lying to me, fuckwad. I’ll kill your ass myself.”

Chapter
3
 

9:00 am, December 8, 1999

To those on the outside, a place like Reno seemed like a paradise; whether it was one of unlimited excess or simply lost souls depended on the viewer—or the luck of the craps table. To those who lived there, it was merely another place, though one that seemed to draw annoying tourists like flies and one that could turn on the residents if they weren’t careful. To people like Drakanis, people who made a living by crawling through the muck of the broken hearts and the lost ones who found themselves with no other option or desire but to turn to crime, it was a heat mirage, a heat mirage blanketed in neon and glamour that hid a rotten core. But to one being, it was a place of exaltation, the site of holiness and history, and the seat of his destiny.

Unaware that he was being spoken of by those who would call him their enemy, the murderer smiled serenely at the
talu`shar
, finding peace in the rhythmic pulsing of light and color that came from within.

To many, the item he knelt before was simply a worthless art project, some ugly-looking thing that was passed around at flea markets and greeted with terse smiles and nods as the viewers explained that of course they liked it, yes, excellent buy, all the while feeling its power, even subconsciously, and hating it for the feeling.

Many were disgusted with it; only a few could sense the power about the thing, and only those the
talu`shar
chose felt compelled to appreciate it. Fewer still—those not chosen simply as prey—were exalted by it. In the soft glow that bled from it, which few were able to bear without going mad, the killer felt completely at ease with himself and with the ordained fate of all things; his spirit drank from the tainted well of the
talu`shar
’s influence and was refreshed.

It had always been like this; the painting would find its way to a new place, and the killer would follow it. In time, he would reclaim it and return it to its proper place. But never had it moved so often in such a short time; always before, it seemed as though decades would pass before it found a new home for him to claim it from. Yet in this city, this marvelous den of blind sheep, it had found seven owners already and might yet find half a dozen more before the time came.