Styx (15 page)

“Yeah, well, life's pretty weird at best and, seeing how death's a part of life, I guess it's gonna be weird, too. Come on, put your gun away and start the car. We're gonna take a little ride along the dike. I'll tell you the whole story, best I can.”

Delacroix put the gun back in his holster, but did not start the car. He made no move toward the key. Styx watched him sit there behind
the wheel in his expensive suit that must have cost him a week's pay. He felt sorry for the young Congolese.

“Look, I know we got off on the wrong foot, you and me. But this is a chance for us to make it right.”

“What do you want?” asked Delacroix, struggling to keep his voice steady.

“I want you to start the car. Look, the old Raphael Styx is dead. You can forget about him. The good news is, there's a new Styx in town.”

It was hard for Styx to support the weight of the Glock. He wagged the barrel at the steering wheel and waited for Delacroix to start the car.

“You got promoted, huh?” Styx said. “Cool. No hard feelings: my loss is your gain. Except it turns out I'm still on the case, after all.”

“What do you mean?”

“I'm gonna get the fuck who did this to me. All it cost him was three lousy bullets, but it cost me everything: my wife, my son, my job, my house, my life. I don't think I just ‘came back,' Delacroix. I think I was
sent
back for a reason.”

“I never—”

Delacroix didn't finish the sentence. But he didn't have to: Styx had never met a zombie before either.

“And that reason is to take down the Stuffer.” When Delacroix backed out into the street, he reached up and snapped off the dome light. “I'm assuming that's what you want, too. Which would be good, because there's no way I can do it without your help.”

He lay the Glock on his lap. His arms and legs felt like they were attached to his body with safety pins. It wouldn't have surprised him if his right arm had broken off under the weight of the gun.

They headed south, then east toward the harbor and soon passed the famous
Mercator
ship, which lay gleaming in the light of the full moon. A ghost ship, its decks patrolled by the spirits of many a long-dead pirate.

“Can I ask you where you've been?” said Delacroix after a long silence. “Why didn't you just go home?”

“Jesus, man, you see what I look like!”

“I know, but—”

“No, you
don't
know. You have no idea. I'm a hunk of rotting meat, Delacroix. You think I can inflict this on my wife and son?”

“I got the impression,” Delacroix said delicately, “your wife isn't exactly sorry to see you gone.”

I'm glad to hear it
, Styx wanted to say, but he didn't mean it the way it would have sounded.

“She told me things haven't been the same between you, with you always busy with the job.”

Styx looked up. Now
he
was surprised. “She said that?”

“Not in those exact words. Hers were, ah, stronger. She said you don't even know she exists anymore.”

“That's a lie.”

“She thought you'd react that way,” said Delacroix. “She said you have no idea there's anything wrong.”

“I love my wife,” Styx heard himself say. He clenched his jaw angrily and felt a tooth break off at the root. He swallowed it, and said, “I'd kill for her. I'd die for her.”

“She says you threatened her.”

“I was an asshole, I admit it. But I never laid a finger on her!”

Delacroix was ready to leave it at that, but Styx wasn't finished. “I'm telling you, my family means everything to me. I don't give a fuck about anything else.”

He stared out the window, saw the shimmering water of the harbor. They entered a traffic circle and took the second turnoff, toward the Wellington Racetrack. The roads were deserted.

“You made any progress on the case?” Styx said softly.

“We have a couple of leads. Listen, I have to tell Crevits about this.”

“No. What about Karel Rotiers?”

“No connection to Madeleine Bohy. None we can find, anyway. Oh, and he's filing a complaint against the department. He says you attacked him in the interrogation room.”

“Shit. The whole world's upside down.”

Delacroix kept his eyes on the road.

“I saw him,” Styx said. “The Stuffer. I didn't get a good look at him, couldn't see his face, but I saw his shape, his size, his posture.”

“Jesus,” said Delacroix.

“He was wearing a yellow oilskin slicker and a sou'wester hat. Or maybe the jacket had a hood, I couldn't really tell.”

“That doesn't help much. Half of Ostend owns a yellow raincoat and hat.”

“Yeah, but they don't wear them when it isn't raining. And they don't walk around in a James Ensor mask.”

“James—?”

“Ensor. Painter. Lived here in Ostend, was very well known. You really
are
the new kid in town, aren't you?”

Styx told the story of the previous evening, from the Hofstraat to the encounter outside the cabana on the beach. Delacroix never once took his eyes from the road ahead.

“So you're saying,” he finally concluded, “that Spilliaert is definitely the Stuffer.”

“No doubt about it. He's been living for a year in that apartment in the Hofstraat. We just don't know who Spilliaert really is.”

“So if Karel Rotiers
doesn't
match the sketch we had made from Spilliaert's landlord's description, then we can scratch him?”

“Probably.”

“We've got a team staking out that apartment, you know.”

“It won't do any good,” said Styx. “He won't go back there. He knows we're watching the place.”

“But does he know you're not . . . dead?”

It was the first time Delacroix had acknowledged the truth out loud.

“I don't think so. I think he assumes I
am
.” Styx wanted to make eye contact with Delacroix. It was a connection, however tenuous, with the land of the living. But the rookie avoided his gaze. “You think that's an advantage for us?”

“It doesn't matter what I think,” said Delacroix. “But the Stuffer's dealing with uncertainty for the first time since he started, and that's probably a disadvantage for him. I still think we need to bring Crevits in.”

“And I still say no. He'll just figure out a way to use it to his
own
advantage. I don't trust him.” Styx sighed in unconscious imitation of the commissioner. “The Stuffer's got to be searching for me,” he said. “He'll want to finish what he started. Maybe we can use that to lure him out of his new hiding place. We have to keep my presence secret for now, don't let anyone on the squad know.”

“Not even Crevits?”

“Especially not Crevits.”

“Okay,” said Delacroix with a wry chuckle. “As if they'd believe it anyway.”

“So that's one problem resolved,” Styx said. “I can't believe Isabelle told you all that shit. She really thinks we've grown apart? I mean, she said that to
you
? You're a total stranger.”

“Most people think it's easier to tell their secrets to a stranger than to their nearest and dearest.”

“That's bullshit.”

He still couldn't believe it. He wanted to ask if Delacroix had talked with Victor, too. But he decided to save that question for later. He was already wound too tight, and his body wasn't happy about it. The twitching continued to get worse, and it was no longer confined to his shoulder. He felt a muscle in his neck acting up, too.

They pulled into the Wellington parking lot.

“I need to get some air,” Delacroix said. “You really reek, man.”

Styx had almost forgotten about that.

“Go ahead,” he said.

But before Delacroix could get out of the car, Styx laid a hand on his arm.

“You haven't answered my question,” he said.

“What question?”

“Can I trust you?”

Without answering, Delacroix shook off Styx's twitching hand.

“I have to let this all sink in, man,” he said.

As he walked off into the darkness, Styx sat there, his thoughts in a whirl. How could Isabelle have told such intimate personal details to a stranger? And none of it was even
true
, that was the part that was hardest to understand. She must be deep in shock, that was the only explanation that made sense.

With fumbling fingers, he unbuttoned his shirt and looked at the wound on his chest. The blood was completely clotted, but the wound itself was ulcerated. He examined his fingers: three nails were gone, and his fingertips were badly abraded. No, not abrasions but cankerous sores.
Shit, shit, shit
. The disintegration process was well under way, and things were going from bad to worse.

A tiny red glow in the distance told him that Delacroix was out there smoking a cigarette, probably in some fancy holder. He wondered whether or not the rookie believed him—and, if he did, if he was prepared to help him. From Delacroix's perspective, it would probably be better if Styx remained dead.

The point of red arced away and vanished, and Delacroix reappeared, returning to the car. He stood by the open passenger's window, looking in.

“Everything I did was for Isabelle and Victor's own good,” Styx said. “I hope you can believe me. I would never put them at risk.”

“Well, this is for
your
own good, man.”

In the side-view mirror, Styx saw revolving blue roof lights pull into the lot. One—no, two sets of them.

He lifted the Glock from his lap. It was so unnaturally heavy. A strange grin danced across Delacroix's face.

“Put the gun away, man. You're not going to use it.”

“What makes you so sure?” Styx asked, though he knew the younger man was right.

“I don't know how much of your bullshit story is true, but I know you're a cop, or used to be. And cops don't shoot other cops. You're not a killer.”

“You bastard,” said Styx.

He crawled over the gear-shift lever and settled in behind the wheel. Before Delacroix could do anything to stop him, Styx started the engine and raced away from the approaching blue lights.

The world whipped past Raphael Styx at warp speed, and neither his body nor his mind could keep up with the accelerated tempo. His ragged hands gripped the wheel, he could barely depress the accelerator with his clumsy right foot, but he roared out of the Wellington parking lot into the Koningin Astridlaan at full speed. In the rearview mirror he saw the two patrol cars pull up beside the helpless Joachim Delacroix, then take off after him in hot pursuit, blue light bars flashing, sirens howling.

“Bastard,” he muttered.

Why had he trusted Delacroix?

He shifted up a gear and raced parallel to the sea, northeast toward the maze of streets that formed the city center, but the cop cars were gaining on him. The yellow streetlights flew past like burning
torches. A burst of static came from Delacroix's radio. He reached to snap it off and heard a voice say, “Attention. You are strongly advised to pull over. You are driving a vehicle that belongs to the Ostend police. I repeat: the vehicle you are driving is . . .”

Kiss my ass
, Styx thought.

He swung left up a side street that led to the dike.

Still a cop
, Delacroix had said.
And cops don't . . .

But he couldn't concentrate on the rookie's voice in his head. The voice on the radio drowned it out:

“Please identify yourself. I repeat: please identify yourself. The Ostend police are right behind you. If you fail to comply, we'll be forced to use other means to stop you.”

Styx wondered what “other means” the dispatcher was talking about. Helicopters, like in the United States? Only once before had he ever been involved in a chase. Not a carjacker, but a guy who'd stuck up an armored bank transport. He'd managed to pull the asshole over right outside the Kursaal and get in a couple of good shots before anyone else caught up with them. When the ambulance finally got there, he'd suggested that the perp must have hit his head on his steering wheel. No idea why the airbag hadn't deployed.

He shut off the radio.

“Fuck you,” he told the air.

He checked the rearview mirror. The two cars were still close behind him. He squealed onto the dike, saw apartment buildings and hotels flash by to his right and the sea to his left. In the mirror, he saw the fierce determination on his face. The headlights of the approaching cars reflected larger and larger in his pupils, blinding him.

The sirens were almost on top of him now. A voice yelled “Pull over!” through a megaphone.

Ahead, he saw the metal gate that gave access to one of the dozens of breakwaters which jutted out from the seawall and ran across the beach to the North Sea. He had two choices. He could follow instructions and pull over. But then what? He had no idea how they'd react to his return. What lay ahead: A media circus and imprisonment? The only other option was to try to escape. There was no third way out.