Styx (10 page)

He took a can of Garnier from his Kruidvat bag and sprayed it all over himself, misting his new clothes, his hair, his face. He doused all visible skin—face, hands, wrists—with aftershave, and rinsed out his mouth with the vile brew.

Now for the last part of the makeover. For the first time in his life he unscrewed a jar of foundation. No, actually, wrong: he'd opened one three weeks ago. Not for Isabelle, who had a natural beauty, with creamy skin that didn't need any help from Estée Lauder. Nope, that jar had been for Victor, who'd awakened that morning with a giant zit on his nose and refused to go to school until it had been camouflaged.

He should see what I look like
, Styx thought sadly.

He eyed himself in the mirror and began to rub the cream gently into the worst places: the black rings around his eyes, the burst blood vessels on and to the sides of his nose, the blackened lips.

But that barely made a difference, he saw, so he started over, smearing a thick layer of makeup over his whole face. He felt like an artist who, too poor to afford a fresh canvas, bought a cheap old portrait at the flea market and simply painted over it.

He replaced his deathly pallor with what might just pass for a normal complexion.

It took the entire jar of foundation to do it.

Styx wiped his hands clean on his bloody old clothes and hid them in his shopping bag. He took one last look at himself in the mirror.

He would pass.

Maybe Raphael Styx
was
a zombie, but he
looked
like the man of the hour.

He nodded to himself and tried to laugh, but the sound echoed hollow and dead in the little cubicle.

Isabelle Gerard held out until five
AM
before calling Commissioner John Crevits and hauling
him
out of bed for a change. She sat on the sofa with Shelley beside her. The pit bull had awakened her in the middle of the night, howling like a banshee outside the front door. Victor, bless him, had slept right through the commotion. He had another exam in the morning, so he needed the rest.

“Styx?”

“No, it's Isabelle.”

“Isabelle?”

“I'm sorry to call so early, John,” she said, not really sorry at all. Crevits had been a friend of the family, once, but Isabelle thought of him now as the man whose big mouth had driven the last nail into the coffin of her marriage.

“What's up? I thought it must be your husband.”

“He's not here, John. That's why I'm calling.”

She could hear Crevits come fully awake.

“This isn't the first time he's stayed out all night, Isabelle, we both know that.”

“This isn't just one of his . . . exploits.”

“How do you know? He'll turn up—he always does. Remember that time last year when you went to work and found him about three-quarters crocked in the ER?”

Isabelle remembered it perfectly: the shame of it, the humiliation. That time had been the last straw: Styx dragged into the hospital by some scrawny hooker he'd found in the gutter. Barely coherent, he'd tried to tell Isabelle the bitch was an informant, but she knew better. She'd needed half a Valium to calm herself down.

“I'm telling you, this is different,” she insisted. “He took Shelley out for a walk, sometime around nine or ten last night, and he never came home.”

“He's probably sleeping it off in—”

“Shelley showed up around one in the morning, John.”

“Ah, well, that's good.”

“Alone.”

“Yeah, that's not so good.”

While Crevits considered the situation, Isabelle sat there petting the stupid dog. She couldn't stand the mangy creature. It reminded her more and more of her husband: an obstinate beast, with an emphasis on the “beast,” and an animalistic temper.

“Have you tried calling him?”

“He didn't take his phone. It's sitting right here. You know he doesn't want to be bothered when the two of them are out walking.”

“And
he
hasn't called
you
?”

“No.”

“I don't like the sound of this,” Crevits sighed.

“I don't know what to do, John.”

“Listen, I know you don't want to hear this, but there's another possibility.”

“You're right: I don't want to hear it.”

“Have you called her?”

“Called who?”

“You know who. Amanda.”

“No, I haven't called her, and I'm not
going
to call her.”

“He might be there, Isabelle. I know he broke it off with her, and I don't want to rake up old coals, but maybe . . .”

No, no maybes. She would rather die than call that whore. Amanda had been one of her husband's many conquests, but she'd also been the girlfriend of Gino Tersago, the young thug who ran three nightclubs and more than a dozen cathouses in and around the Ostend harbor. Styx had run across her during a stakeout and had interrogated her.

In, as Isabelle later learned, the backseat of his car.

One thing led to another, and Styx eventually reported that she was working for him, helping to make a case against Tersago and his criminal associates. Amanda was apparently sick of Tersago, but pretty much everyone on the detective squad—pretty much everyone in Ostend except Isabelle—knew she was giving Raphael Styx more than information. There was station-house gossip about them, but there was also talk of hush money being thrown Styx's way. Since Styx and Amanda had gotten involved, Tersago seemed to be getting away with more than ever.

“I don't mind calling her for you,” said Crevits.

“You do and I will kill you.”

“Why?”

“I've been embarrassed enough, John.”

“Okay, I understand. We don't know anything's happened to him.
My advice is don't panic, try to stay calm. I'll make a few calls and put a couple of men on it. Ten to one we'll find him in some—”

She heard the commissioner stop himself, just in time.

“I hope so. I've had it, John. I want to tell him to his face it's over.”

“Isabelle—”

“Don't Isabelle me. I can't take it anymore. He's humiliated me for the last time. If he
does
come home, I'll kick him right out the door.”

“And Victor?”

“He's old enough to know the truth.”

There was a long silence between them.

“You know the man loves you, Iz. He doesn't mean to be such a shit. . . . It's just the way he is. You have no idea what it's like for a cop. The stress you have to deal with, every goddamn day. The misery you're surrounded by. And you know the statistics: every couple goes through a rough patch after fifteen years.”

She could tell that Crevits was only saying what he thought was expected of him. Underneath the bullshit, she knew he was rooting for them to finally divorce. She'd long suspected John had a secret thing for her.

“What about the stress a cop's
wife
has to deal with every goddamn day?” she said fiercely. “Don't try to defend him. If anybody needs a little consideration here, it's me. I work forty hours every week surrounded by misery, and then I'm supposed to cook and clean for that son of a bitch, do his ironing and sit up waiting for him to come home and pass out on the couch? No way, I'm done. He can find himself another sucker.”

“You don't mean all that, Isabelle.”

“Fuck him, John. And fuck you, too.”

While they talked, John Crevits had struggled out of bed and powered up his laptop. When he saw another call coming in on his phone—the squad room—he let it roll over to voice mail rather than
asking Isabelle to let him put her on hold. There were two e-mails in his inbox—both from the squad—but before he checked them he clicked quickly to the Ostend police's Facebook page. These days it seemed like everybody over the age of eight was on Facebook.

“Look,” he said to Isabelle, the phone nestled uneasily between his ear and shoulder and both hands on his keyboard, “if I can find him and get him home before you have to leave for the hospital, will you at least talk with him?”

“Sure, John, I'll talk with him. I'll tell him to pack a suitcase and call a lawyer.”

The Facebook page loaded. Near the bottom of the window, someone had posted a photograph to their page; the top inch peeked up over the bottom of the frame so he'd have to scroll down to see it in its entirety.

When he saw the name of the poster—all capital letters, separated by periods—he got a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach.

S.T.U.F.F.E.R.

“Oh, shit.”

“
No
shit,” said Isabelle. “He's not getting away with it again, no matter what he—”

“Give me a second here.”

“I mean it, John!”

“One second.”

Ever since the media had given him the nickname, the Stuffer had posted half a dozen times to the police department's Facebook page, each time creating a different account, each account using a slightly different variant of the name. Mostly he'd put up long self-satisfied screeds, boasting of his “accomplishments” and offering his twisted thoughts on the meaning of art in contemporary society—but he'd also contributed photos of his first two victims.

Was Madeleine Bohy's headless, limbless, lifeless torso now also on display, not just for the city, but for the world at large?

Crevits clicked on the scroll bar at the right of the window and dragged it down, revealing the newly posted image.

He gasped.

“John?”

“Oh, Jesus God!”

Raphael Styx, the man he'd known for all these years, whose career he had nurtured, who he'd pulled out of more ditches more times than he could count, the man with whom he'd shared so many memorable moments, was dead.

“Isabelle,” he croaked, his voice broken, “it's not what you think.”

“What's the matter, John? Tell me.”

But he could find no words for her, not even a sigh. He sat there on the side of his bed, his computer resting on his lap, the phone to his ear, staring at the dead face and lifeless body of Chief Inspector Raphael Styx, his old friend.

“Isabelle, I'm sorry. He's—”

After informing Styx's wife that
she was now a widow, Crevits sat there for at least another half hour, staring at the screen. As he watched, new postings appeared on the Facebook page, like mushrooms springing up from a forest floor. One in particular summed up all the rest:

“The Stuffer's got another one.”

By the time he arrived at the station at nine
AM
everyone knew about it. The mood was bizarre, surreal. Crevits called them all together in the canteen, and they stared at him as if they too were dead. They sat there, as motionless as the Stuffer's sand sculptures, waiting for him to address them.

Crevits didn't feel up to giving a speech. What could he say? The
usual pep talk: “We all have to go on with our work and continue the search for the Stuffer.” That wasn't his style. He wanted to be alone.

He turned around without a word and went back to his office.

An hour later he buzzed his secretary Carla and told her to find Joachim Delacroix and send him in.

“Commissioner?” Delacroix said.

“How far have you gotten with the serial case?”

“Me?”

“Yeah, you.”

“But I'm—I mean, I'm just a detective.”

“You're a cop, aren't you? An inspector?”

“Yes, sir. But it was Styx's case. God, it's terrible, isn't it?”

“Yeah, terrible. There are no words for how bad it is. But life goes on, Inspector, and so does the Stuffer. I want you to take over for Styx. Congratulations on your promotion. Leave the paperwork to me. From now on, it's
your
case.”

Delacroix looked like a safe had fallen on his head.

“But I've only been here for—”

“Did I ask you a question, Delacroix? This is my division, and I make the assignments. Styx had a lot of enemies. He's stepped on a shitload of toes over the years, and I don't want somebody doing a half-assed job because—well, because it was Styx, you get me?”

“I—don't I have to wait for authorization from Brussels?”

“I don't see why. I just told you: I'm in charge here. You're the guy who wanted to get
out
of Brussels. So let's get cracking, okay? Whatever happened with our original suspect, that guy we picked up after the first murder, what was his name?”

Delacroix realized he was being tested and answered immediately: “Karel Rotiers. He knew the victim, went out with her a couple of times. And then we linked him to the second victim, they were Facebook friends. But we haven't found
any
connection between Rotiers and Madeleine Bohy.”

“Yet. That doesn't mean there isn't one.”