Deja Blue (25 page)

He’d lied, cheated, and stolen to gain his objective; had done so since childhood to please Mother and to live up to her innermost dreams for his future. She’d failed in medical school, and she’d died in poverty and misery, but not before he vowed to reach the pinnacle she’d toppled from. Now here he was, at the top of the food chain in his profession in the state—honored for his professional papers, his handling of difficult and sometimes bizarre criminal cases—and the use of his precision tools.

He had done his best to become the best at what he did, and Mother—wherever she was—must surely be proud of him.

He’d done it all, all that she’d asked of him and more…far more.

The fact it took him to far-flung places, both literally and on the internet, to locate and use sources that allowed him to get the grades and shine on his tests didn’t matter. What mattered was that he had arrived, that he’d gotten the degrees that said he was an expert in his field, that people now looked to him for answers, that he was the man with the answers!

It placed a great deal of pressure on a man, for certain. His final act to please Mother had been put off for years and years; he’d always find an excuse to not drive a nail through the head of a sleeping Marci Cottrill, but Mother never let him forget that deathbed promise he’d made to her that he would end Marci’s miserable life and put her to rest. No one on the planet had hurt Mother more than did Marci Cottrill.

“She got what she deserved. She asked for it. She brought it about. Brought it on herself.” He’d massaged his conscious with every justification and rationale, all echoed in Mother’s voice inside his head where she agreed. Where she told him that Her Lord agreed as well. Still, the act had taken a great deal out of him.

He had the problem of looking himself in the eye nowadays—since the first murder, actually. He had a conscious, after all. Reflecting surfaces disturbed him to his core. And the mounting pressures of the job, and keeping up appearances, and now this psychic had come to Charleston in search of answers—in search of him. Dr. Aurelia Hiyakawa was just adding to his anxiety level.

Constant worry now…increased apprehension. It could cause a mistake, a mistake that could cost him everything. And one small part of his brain wondered if that was a bad thing.

He’d worked late tonight and now he found himself stripping away the green garb of his profession, dumping it into the laundry hamper atop that of others working in the building. Tomorrow he’d find a fresh, laundered replacement to slip into, to again become the shapeless, formless green man with the precision equipment and precision tools, knives, and saws an extension of his robotic hands. Again, again, and again. It’d become so much dull routine, and him now, this profession. What else was he but what he did?

In all this spiritual turmoil, he had ultimately become what he did in life; no identity beyond his work existed anymore or ever again. He was a walking, talking automaton of his job. To drive home the point, his eyes had turned to grapes without seeds showing in them. Without light emiting from them or entering through them. Little wonder he wanted to see his own reflection.

Meanwhile, his nostrils, like sticky tubes, carried only the stench of blood. No amount of cigarettes could touch the odor clinging there. His ears had become conduits for screams and pleadings. Meanwhile, his hamsized thumbs, which had always been a problem, were now iron skillets, his fingers awkwardly constructed probes, his feet buttressing supports, legs preset instruments, his mind that of the butcher in search of a good cut of meat— something not yet desiccated or fly-ridden.

The hammer and nail had become the tools of choice, striking down all the years of precision work. The ugly hammer and the cleanly greased nails he used to strike down one person had become his sword and power. All to get Marci, to remove her from this life.

But then came the urge to do it again. A strange and overpowering itch he could not account for until Mother’s voice in his head explained that it was all right to scratch it—that it was God’s will, that her son didn’t have to understand God’s inscrutable plan—only to carry it out.

And so Marci became only the first, and after her, he did it again, and the urge remained like an ugly stain that nothing could wash away, try as he might.

He had showered now, dressed in Brookes brothers suit and tie, Armani shoes, and now he found his Lexus in his reserved garage parking space. He pulled out into the night to drive home to his house in the hills, a small mansion, and to his three children and his doting wife, who in essence would do anything for him within reason, so long as he kept her in comfort.

He had decided that his wife could not share his darkest secret, that he was the Hammerhead killer, the Sleepwalking killer.

Stress . He felt stress closing in on him. Four walls encroaching, a floor tightening at his feet, and a ceiling coming down on his head. It were as if someone had found him out—or soon would. It were as if soon, very soon, he’d be in a cube imprisoned within. A cube located somewhere in the mind, somewhere where neither Mother nor God, nor his job, nor his life could touch him or threaten him. Where he’d exist independent, unreachable, free.

While he feared the change he sensed coming, he almost welcomed it. These thoughts flit through his mind as he pulled into the driveway and stared at the lights of home and another night’s pretense in this world.

# # #

Over dinner, they got into the subject of the brooding Amos Kunati, as after a second martini and an order of lobster bites—or toes—from the appetizer menu, Rae had launched into the detectives “bad ass attitude.” Orvison had by then further filled her in on Kunati’s background, so far as he knew it.

“Then Amos was born and raised here, like you?” she asked after learning that Kunati had indeed been a major basketball star at Capitol High and had gone on to study Criminal Justice at Marshall University—dominant school color: green.

“Adopted by a local couple. Brought here when he was maybe four, five.”

“From where?” She was curious to see if he’d back Kunati’s story.

“Nigeria, some place called Ibo City. But don’t let that fool you. He’s West Virginia, through and through.”

“Meaning?”

“Loves to hunt, fish, camp, bring down white tail deer and ride our white-water canyons either on an ATV or a raft.”

“Rafting’s a hobby?”

“Among others.”

“Others?”

“Scuba dives…fences…plays tennis—quite well rounded.”

“Lots of interests. Sounds like a good catch for a girl. Why’s he single?”

“Told you, he’s a typical West Virginian.”

“Fears the ball and chain, you mean?”

“Doesn’t want to be tied down, not for any reason or anything. And he’s self-reliant, and can be as resourceful as can be.”

“And he doesn’t care for government interference?”

“Not really.” “Of any sort, including me.”

Orvison grinned. “No matter how pretty the package, no.”

She smiled back, a twinkle in her eye. “Doesn’t want anyone telling him what to do, especially a woman?”

Orvison nodded. “Especially.” “And you’re not too keen on it either, being a dyedin-the-wool West Virginia boy?

“Let’s just say that I’m dealing with it a bit better than Amos.”

She nodded appreciatively. “Must be hard on Amos being in a command structure then. What’s he going to do when we elect a woman president?”

“Dunno.”

“Eat his gun?”

“Got that right,” Orvison replied solemnly but then burst out laughing. “I know…not funny.”

“Actually it is.” She laughed to join him. “Hmmm…know anything about Amos’s birth parents?”

“Killed so far as I know.”

“He told me his father and grandfather were—had been a shaman. Was he putting me on?”

“I couldn’t tell you. Why are you interrogating me about Amos? You don’t for a moment suspect him of anything, do you?”

“Curious to know with whom I’m working, who’s got my back. After the other night at the trailer, I know I can trust you up to a point, but not so sure about Kunati.”

Orvison nodded, understanding even about the ‘up to a point’ crack. Among cops of all kinds, this was an unbreakable law, that the one you worked with had to have your complete trust, but she was not Charleston PD, now was she, and you had to have complete trust, but she was an outsider after all, and a so-called psychic at that. “I get it, but honestly,” continued Orvison, looking older, pudgier now than she’d remembered. “I don’t know much beyond his sheet back of my desk in a file drawer. Keeps that birth part of his life pretty much to himself.”

“You say his parents were killed when he was just a child.”

“Yes, that much he’s told me. Says he has no memory of the event, but that he, too might well’ve been killed in the incident.”

“Killed how?”

“Machetes, I believe.”

“Matchetes?”

“One of those tribal war things over there, an overthrow of the government spilling out of the cities and ravishing villages, not unlike Darfur in the Sudan today.”

“Maybe has something to do with his lack of belief in the supernatural in general and my psi powers in particular.” Rae shrugged and reached for the salt cellar which she rolled about in her hands.

“How do you figure?”

“Apparently, the village shamans—his father and grandfather before him—could not protect his people, his mother…his entire village. So if shamanism failed him…”

“I get it.”

She imagined how much trauma Amos must have endured. She sacrificed a heartbeat to the thought of the horrors Kunati had likely put completely out of his mind since it’d occurred at such a young age. Yet she knew from experience that it remained deep and abiding like a black cougar in his mind, capable of pouncing at any moment. Memories of events, however buried, remained in the vault—photographic and filled with sensory clues from sounds to odors. Anything might trigger a series of flash photos of that terrible time, which for years now had lain quiet and controlled beneath the seemingly solid rock of consciousness. Subconscious memory bided its time.

She imagined the stored memory of burning and rotting flesh that Amos Kunati had carried with him all these years. It must take its toll in one form or another.

Finished with the meal, she asked, “Where is Amos now? I haven’t seen him all day?”

“He took a day off.”

A detective working a high profile case didn’t just take a day off, certainly not lightly. “In the middle of the Hammerhead sleepwalker case, he takes a day off?” She hadn’t meant to sound so harsh but that’s how it came out.

“He’s been pushing hard; I told him…ordered him, actually, to take a day off, to step back. We ahhh…had an argument, if you want the truth.”

“An the argument was about?”

“Nothing…everything.”

“You told him to step back, take some time off?” “Before he lost it, yes.”

She sighed heavily. “I have never intentionally intimidated anyone, save my cleaning lady when she tries to up prices on me.” She gave a moment’s thought to Enriqui who really did so much more than clean house and truly deserved a raise, but it was, for the time being, out of the question. “I mean I don’t see myself as intimidating, and yet so many people—big guys like Amos, too—are somehow intimidated by me. I’m just a little Oriental-Irish woman with insights.”

“If it’s any consolation, Doc, I find you charming, and not in the least intimidating, and the longer you are here, the more I feel that we did make the right choice in bringing you to Charleston.”

“Really?”

“You’ve obviously won me over—at least I know you have guts.”

“So…maybe I’d best concentrate on Amos.”

“I suspect it’d be a waste of time unless you put the collar on the Hammerhead killer!”

They had foregone dessert, and he’d paid the bill, and soon they strolled back to the stationhouse. “You ought to call it a night, Rae,” he suggested.

“Not yet. The meal…maybe the drinks…have enervated me. I’m going to locate Hatfield and tell him his sister is at peace. I should’ve done it sooner.”

“You do that, but first come back up to my office. Get those files safely locked away, the ones you came in with.”

“Sure thing, Carl.”

They rode the elevator from the garage entrance to the second floor where Carl’s office stood locked against any intruders. In a moment, she held the files in question in her hands, blinking, feeling the effects of the martinis conspiring with fatigue. How fleeting the energy boost had been, she thought.