Styx (21 page)

“Forget it. True, Rotiers knew the first two victims, but he had absolutely no connection to the third one. And he's got an airtight alibi: he was out of the country when Madeleine Bohy was killed, in Ibiza, adding a couple more señoritas to his stable.”

“Shit.”

“That's why I'm pinning my hopes on Ornelis. The doctor's the only legitimate suspect I've got, and Crevits is really starting to turn up the heat. I can't just sit around and do nothing.”

“It's not Ornelis. It can't be.”

“How can you be so sure?” asked Delacroix.

“I don't know exactly how to put this,” Styx began. He rattled the ice cubes in his glass, and they tinkled like the bell announcing the start of a new round. “But now that you've gotten a good look at my, ah, condition, maybe you'll be able to swallow it.” He took a breath. “Ever since I said farewell to the land of the living, it's not just that I'm still walking around. Somehow or other, I also seem to be able to visit, well, another Ostend.”

“Another Ostend? What other Ostend?”

“The Ostend of La Belle Époque.”

“You lost me,” said Delacroix. He stepped to the bar and poured himself another drink.

Styx, still nursing his first one, explained: the train station, Leopold II and his entourage, the lonely Surrealist painter in the night who'd introduced himself as Paul Delvaux. Styx couldn't quite believe it himself, but his father-in-law's pocket watch seemed to be a key—or, better, a doorway—to the past.

“You don't mean you met the real Paul Delvaux?”

“Why not?”

“Because he's, well,
dead
?”

They let that sink in, and at the same moment they both burst out laughing.

“You sure it wasn't some sort of hallucination?” said Delacroix.

“It seemed awfully real to me.”

“Maybe the whole dying thing's got you confused?”

“Could be,” said Styx. “Maybe. Maybe my mental ability's fading out, like an Alzheimer's patient.”

“So you're fighting against time, trying to solve the case before the little gray cells give up the ghost?”

“I'm no Hercule Poirot.”

“I hope not. A zombie Poirot, back from the dead to crack the case—now
that
would be crazy.”

“All I can tell you,” said Styx, “is that Delvaux got me thinking differently about the murders.”

Styx limped over to the only bookcase in the room. It was an old grandmotherly affair, with five shelves behind a pair of glass doors. There were books on the four lower shelves, and the top shelf displayed a collection of knickknacks, souvenirs from family holidays, and a couple of framed photos of the old Ostend, one of them showing a group of fishermen on the beach. Styx bent over and slid a thick art book from the middle shelf. It was heavy, and his back seized up on him for a long, painful moment.

“I want to show you something,” he gasped. “When I met Delvaux, he was painting a nude woman, and that's when I saw it.”

“Saw what?”

“The connection. The missing link.”

Styx opened the book, a study of the Belgian Surrealists. He'd been paging through it in the hours before Delacroix's arrival, and the dog-eared corners made it easy for him to find the pages he wanted.

“Look at this one.”

He tapped a reproduction of a Delvaux painting with a sepulchral fingertip.

Nude in a Train Station.

Delacroix saw it immediately: the pose of the woman in the
painting matched the posture of Reinhilde Debels's body in the Mu.ZEE's sculpture garden almost exactly.

“He painted a lot of naked women,” Styx said, “in all sorts of strange settings.”

“Like the Stuffer leaves his victims in strange places, you mean?”

“Right. He's copying the Surrealists, and not just Delvaux.”

“Jesus.” Delacroix was leafing through the thick volume. A picture on one of the other dog-eared pages brought him to a standstill. The torso of a naked woman—arms, legs, and head all missing—standing on a deserted beach. It was a Magritte, titled
When the Hour Strikes
.

“Jesus Christ,” said Delacroix. “This one's almost exactly like what we found.”

“So you don't think I'm hallucinating?”

“No,” Delacroix said firmly. “This is absolutely a legitimate lead.”

“And you understand that Tobias Ornelis had nothing to do with it?”

“I'm not ready to go that far. Like I said: Ornelis is a big Ensor fan. I want to show him these paintings and see how he reacts.”

“He won't have any idea what you're driving at,” said Styx, closing the book and setting it down on an end table. “Where's his motive? How does it do Ornelis any good to kill a few people and fuck around with their bodies? He's got all the bodies he wants down in his morgue. No, it just doesn't add up.”

They sat side by side on the old sofa, thinking and drinking.

“You want another one?” asked Styx after a while. He seemed happy to have Delacroix's company.

“Thanks, no, I've got to get ready for tomorrow's questioning. And I need to do some research, follow up on your leads. Well done, Chief Inspector.”

Styx led him to the front door.

“Does this mean we're working together?”

“Let's see what happens tomorrow,” Delacroix said. “Then we can decide.”

“I'll be right here,” said Styx. “I think there's an old computer around somewhere. I can do some research, too. Maybe some of those old Surrealists still have family here in Ostend.”

“You think that might be important?”

“Who knows? It's worth a shot. I'm not going anywhere. I have to do
something
. I'll see what I can dig up on collectors, art historians, gallery owners, museum curators. If I come up with anything that seems promising, I'll let you know.” He paused. “When I see you, I mean. In this condition, I guess I'll have to wait for you to come to me.”

“Sounds like we
are
working together, then,” said Delacroix. He didn't want to shake Styx's hand—who knew what pieces might break off if he did—but he touched it gently and fought the urge to whip out his pocket square and wipe off the putrescence. “I'd get some sleep if I were you,” he advised. “You look dead tired.”

“Dead as your sense of humor,” said Styx. “Anyway, I don't seem to need much sleep anymore. I guess I'll sleep when I'm
really
dead.”

He hoisted his walking stick, pretending to drive Delacroix out of the house. It was still raining, and the rookie had almost disappeared into the night when Styx called him back.

“I almost forgot,” he said, reaching into the pocket of his father-in-law's outdated suit. “I wanted to give you this.”

“What is it, an original Delvaux?” Delacroix joked.

With difficulty, Styx worked a thick yellow envelope out of his pocket.

“It's a letter,” he said. “For her.”

“For who?”

“Isabelle.” He handed it to Delacroix. “If I mail it, they'll know I'm still around. But there are some things I need to tell her. Things I never had the balls or the time to say.”

“Inspector, I don't know if I'm the right person to—”

“Of course you are. Who else is there? Not Crevits. And you've already talked with her. Just go back, tell her you've got a few more questions.”

“Well, I could bring her your phone. We've listed all your incoming and outgoing calls, so we don't really need it anymore.”

Styx hadn't realized that the police had taken his phone in the first place. “You don't have it on you now, do you?”

“No, it's back at the squad.”

“I'd actually like to have the phone myself.” He hesitated. “There are some texts and voice mails I want to keep.”

“From your girlfriends?”

Styx looked abashed. “No. From—”

“From Isabelle,” said Delacroix.

Styx nodded, his ruined face melancholic. “Nothing special. I think she called me one time, asked me to pick up a few things at the store.”

Delacroix nodded.

“I never did get there. Something came up. As always. But it would mean a lot to me to hear her voice. Will you bring me the phone?”

“Sure. And I'll figure out another reason to drop by the house. You want me to just give her this?”

“No! Hide it someplace where she'll eventually find it. You're a cop. Imagine it's a piece of incriminating evidence you want to plant at a suspect's house.”

Delacroix ran a finger across his upper lip. “I've never done that,” he said slowly.

Styx looked disgusted. “You're young, you'll learn.”

Styx had written and rewritten the letter half a dozen times on the old stationery he'd found in one of Marc Gerard's desk drawers. He was used to writing police reports and witness statements: straight-ahead prose, objective conclusions, without so much as a hint of emotion. And now here he was, a zombie, and for the first time in decades he had to compose a love letter.

“When she goes out to the kitchen to make coffee, stick it under
the logs in the fireplace,” he said. “She knows that's where my will is. Or, no, better yet, there's a book she gave me on the night table next to the bed. A guidebook for New York. Put it in there.”

“I don't know if I'm cut out to play Cyrano de Bergerac.”

“Who asked you?
I'm
the Cyrano in this story, rookie. You're just the messenger boy.”

“I'll try my best,” Delacroix promised.

“Bullshit. There is no try, only do and do not.”

Delacroix still looked skeptical.

“Come on, man,” Styx pleaded. “I need you to do this for me. It doesn't matter when she finds it, I just want it there for her to find. It might be years from now, but when she
does
find it and read it, she'll understand what she's meant to me. I've been treating her like shit for way too long. My job, my ambition, my fucking appetites—I put all that crap ahead of her and our son.” He shook his head sadly. “What an ass I've been. What a total fucking ass.”

“Can I ask you something?” said Delacroix.

“Sure, what?”

“All the stories, they said you had pretty strong connections to the Ostend underworld. The mob, the pimps, the dealers, Amanda, Gino Tersago.”

“Yeah? What do you want to know?”

“I don't need it all, but you know what they've been saying about you. It's not just that the mobsters were stooling for you. Word is they were paying you off. Hush money, bribes.”

“You're saying I was corrupt?”

“I'm telling you what
they
say.”

“
That
Styx is dead. He's the guy who treated
you
like a piece of shit, too, but he's gone now. I've been given a second chance, and I won't make the same mistakes this time.”

“So you're a
good
zombie?”

“Jesus,” he sighed. “I couldn't figure out how to live a good life. But I'm gonna do whatever I can to live a better death.”

Delacroix nodded, but he didn't look convinced. Styx leaned his cane against the doorjamb and grabbed the sapeur's shoulders with his moldering hands.

“Promise me you'll take the letter. If I'm sure she'll eventually realize how sorry I am, then maybe I can finally get a little rest.”

“I never knew you were such a romantic,” said Delacroix.

“I never was,” Styx admitted. “I couldn't even figure out what to write. I mean, I've always been an action guy, not a word guy. So I borrowed some stuff from Lord Byron.”

“How appropriate.”

“Why's that?”

“He was what they call a Romantic.”

“Yeah, my favorite period. You know, I was gonna pack it in at one point, change careers, start all over. Actually, it was Isabelle's idea. She hated me getting hauled out of bed every other night to go look at dead bodies. She wanted me to ‘reinvent' myself. We talked about it a lot. I was gonna go back to school and everything, study literature, maybe wind up teaching or something. Can you imagine?”

“What happened?”

“I don't know.” He shrugged. “What always happens? Life got in the way.”

They were both quiet for a moment, the wind whipping around them.

“I'll hide the letter in the house,” Delacroix said.

“Thanks. Don't read it, okay?”

“I won't read it. It's none of my business. I just hope you didn't tell her the truth. That wouldn't make things any easier for her.”

“I'm not asking her out for coffee, Delacroix. I'm never going to
see her again. What we had is gone for good. That's why I wrote the letter.”

“Unfinished business?”

“Something like that. I just want to try to make things—it's probably way too late to make them right, but maybe I can make them a little less wrong. I want to, I don't know, whisper in her ear, try to leave her with something better than bad memories, let her know I finally realized she was all I ever really needed out of life, all I ever really wanted. I just wish I'd figured that out before it was too late.”