The Killer Is Dying (5 page)
THING IS, you
don’t
forget the first kill. Bodies are messy things. And after that kill, he never looked at bodies the same—not a woman’s, not those he turned and walked away from, not his own.
They had fascinated him from childhood. All that wet, heavy stuffing, kidneys, stomachs, bladders of various sorts and sizes, miles of plumbing, pints of blood, the whole of it held in by a bag of skin scarcely thicker than a grape’s. How tentative it was, how tenuous a balance. The tiniest well-placed tear, a wandering virus, and it all—in agonizing months, or in an instant—came undone.
Someone had given him, as a child, a
Book of the Body
. The pages were cut into horizontal strips, and as you brought the strips over one by one, a person appeared piecemeal before you: spine, organs, muscles, vasculature, flesh. He couldn’t put the book down, and soon went looking for others. By the time he was twelve he knew systems and diseases better than he knew his classmates’ names, would walk the schoolyard or sit on the hard gym bleachers with bones and body regions (
tibia
,
humerus
,
peritoneum
,
sclera
) tumbling about in his head. Teachers and parents alike assumed him to be among the rare ones who find direction early in life. At age seventeen he entered college on full scholarship, declaring premed. Two years later he was drinking beer for breakfast as he looked out at rain in mangrove trees and tried not to think about the blisters on his feet. Another jungle there: rich growths of fungus.
They’d gone through the village twice. No dugouts or tunnels they could find, and no evidence of anyone having lived there recently. It was abandoned, only a pig and a few birds dead in the cage remaining as evidence of the generations raised here. Christian had come around the last hut and was almost to the trees when the kid, not more than ten or twelve, sprinted out of them with a swing blade raised over his head. Without thinking, in a single motion, he swung the M-14 around on its strap and shot. The kid exploded—like a dropped watermelon. “Full of gas,” one of the older guys told him. “They get that way, from malnutrition, from eating grass because that’s all there is. Boy was next door to dead before you ever laid eyes on him.” As they moved back into the jungle, he looked up and saw birds circling above the trees. Carrion crows would be first, then others, thrushes, tree swifts, greenfinches, coming to feed on the insects drawn first to the carnage itself, then to the droppings of the birds.
Still awake, he turned his head toward the window, exposing his right ear so that the drip from the tub in the bathroom sounded even louder. The faucet, made of silver-colored plastic, had split, and the drip came not from the tip, but from where the faucet joined the tub; a bell shape of rust and mineral deposits showed it had been that way awhile.
He wasn’t accustomed to not knowing what to do.
He was a planner, an engineer at heart, he supposed, not a creative filament anywhere within him. He thrived on order, on having the next step in place and following it to its conclusion.
A professional, yes—but he’d seen too many professionals to take comfort in the word, too many people who’d lost touch with the simple doing of the thing, the skill, the execution, and had gone off in search of The Big Picture, some grander frame. There was no big picture. Not for this, not for anything else.
The other side of the coin was that what you did, your profession, could so easily become routine, workaday, all pride and pleasure in doing, all feeling, drained away.
You had to find some passage, some
between
.
Windows rattled from the thumping bass of a passing car. Speakers must be the size of Marshall stacks, for that. Music never made much sense to him; he just didn’t get it, though as a teenager he listened to all kinds, classical, jazz, rock, trying for a connection, if not with the music itself, then with everyone else, to whom it seemed so important. The car moved away, sound narrowing to little more than rhythm, like distant talking drums.
He didn’t know what to do.
Nothing got put in writing. For a time he’d kept it all on one of those personal pocket-size computers, but after leaving the thing behind in a Dallas motel room and barely getting back in time to retrieve it, he stopped. He wrote the details down, only as an aide to memorizing them, then destroyed the paper. Driver’s license, passport, Social Security card, all had been obtained under false names. He had no fixed address, received no mail, had no family or acquaintances, paid cash. His life was undocumented. Once he was gone there’d be virtually nothing left behind, nothing to show he’d existed.
The contact had come via the Internet, by referral, as all his work came. He’d tapped in at a cybercafé in San Diego, a place the size of a small barn with tables so far apart the patrons may as well have been marooned on islands.
I have been introduced to your work by a mutual friend and would like to discuss the possibility of purchasing a custom doll.
Dolls, because that was what first came into his mind years ago when setting up the system. He had no idea why. He’d always found dolls creepy. An old woman he knew as a kid had a house full of them. You’d look up as you passed through a doorway and one would be staring down at you with rosy cheeks. They were on shelves and windowsills, in glass cases, lined up in polished wooden chairs against the baseboards.
In subsequent days he had bounced the client around various blinds on the Net before directing him to a post office box rented an hour earlier. Three days later he was waiting outside and hit the box with the first rush, walking out, package in hand, alongside women in crisp business dress and old men in ill-fitting pants, polyester shirts, and sweaters. That night just before closing, from a library in Carlsbad, he sent a message:
Your order has been received and is being processed. Thank you for your business.
Sitting at the particleboard desk in his motel that night, fresh from the shower and still undressed, he began. The desk was pushed up right against the window, overhanging the window ledge and air conditioner vent by inches; meager, barely chilled streams of air blew up to the desktop, then onto him. Kids were skateboarding on the sun-warped paving of the parking lot across the street, riding those small waves. Their cries reminded him of jungle birds.
John Rankin. Fifty-one years old. Worked at a mid-level accounting firm in central Phoenix with a client list of real estate brokers and small businesses, owned an old but spacious and well-kept home in the area where Tempe and Mesa rubbed shoulders. Wife did social services (whatever that meant) at a retirement home. No children. Transplants from the Midwest, one of Chicago’s pilotfish suburbs, lured to Phoenix (he surmised) by one of that city’s periodic housing booms. Photos had Rankin waist-up in a suit whose coat came close to fitting, sharp-collared white shirt without tie, belt buckle recently let out a couple of notches so that the old half-circle hoofprints showed; Rankin in close-up profile, worried or sleepy, it was hard to tell; and Rankin full face looking bland and characterless, as though he’d just gotten up from a chair and left his personality behind.
Christian looked out at the kids across the street and wondered, even then, as an altercation broke out and the smallest among them kicked off, grabbed his board and swung it two-handed at another, why anyone would want this man dead. The board connected, the big kid went down, and everyone scattered. Thirty seconds later, the lot was deserted save for the kid lying there.
Now, awake in another motel room, in another city, in what seems almost another country, he turned his face again to the window, slowly realizing that there were no lights outside, that the power had gone out.
How long?
He’d taken a whole pill, and when he did that he often slept without knowing he slept, suspended neither here nor there, sleep or wakefulness, dream images drifting in and out of his mind.
The city had grown unpredictably, uncontrollably, spurting within a few years from a modest western city to the fifth or sixth largest in the country. Freeways and streets couldn’t keep up; brownouts were common.
Lights flickered, dimmed, flared once, and went out. North and south-southeast, sirens sounded.
So: he thrived on order, on having the next step in place, following it to its conclusion. But what
was
the next step?
His client sat somewhere in a fine house or condo, in a restaurant, in a corporate office, awaiting notification that the doll had been sent. Or, for all he knew, his client might have his own communication lines, might believe that he’d already made the move, and failed.
He had failed twice before, but never like this. Another predator had taken his prey. If there was a way to get close to Rankin now, damned if he could think of it. And with the cops dialed in hard on Rankin, he couldn’t stay far enough away.
So what was he to do?
And what the hell had happened back there?
Reason and every instinct within him told him to forget it. Walk. Rearview mirror time. Leave it alone.
Then, it seemed but moments, there was a knock at the door and a voice calling out, “It’s checkout time, sir,” sunlight strong against the curtains. The bedside clock blinked at 2:36, which must be when the power went down. And checkout time meant it had to be, what, eleven? noon? He had slept, slept soundly, for hours. Now he had only to dress, grab the bag packed last night. Ten minutes and he would be gone, a shadow.
POWER HAD GONE OFF during the night.
So, apparently, had Josie.
Home late and soon crashed, Sayles was up at six, straightening things in the kitchen, making coffee and tea, looking out at the leaf-strewn yard. He wasn’t much for lawn care, but he’d have to get out there and rake pretty soon, at least pick up the branches and blown-in trash.
He was still wearing yesterday’s clothes. Put tea and a slice of Sara Lee coffee cake on the tray, knocked on Josie’s door, and waited as he always did before going in.
The bed had been stripped, sheets folded neatly at one corner of the bottom, blanket and comforter at the other. Her bedside table was bare save for a mostly empty tissue box. In the bathroom toilet he found the remains of maybe half a dozen capsules and pills. The rest flushed?
An envelope on the caseless, sweat-stained pillow had on it only the outline of a heart in purple ink.
I knew you would never agree to it, and would do your best to talk me out of it, so this was the only way I could manage. Please do forgive me. Never have I intended to break your heart. And that is exactly what I am doing.
I’ve had the number of a women’s helpline for a long time, and tonight I called. Three came, all of them volunteers who’ve lost husbands or children, or who are themselves survivors. They helped me pack up the few things I need, helped me to the van. You were snoring as we went out. Another hard day at work, I guess. But aren’t they all?
I’m not a survivor, Dale. I’ve known that all along.
I don’t want to fight this—something you can’t understand, it’s just not in you, not in your nature.
Please give me some time, then I’ll be in touch. I’m in good hands, and well cared for. I know you can find me, but I’m hoping that you, like the hospice, will honor my wishes.
I love you so much, Dale. You have been kinder than angels.
That was it. No signature, just another small heart.
Months ago she’d started leaving the TV on all the time, day and night, volume turned down to a whisper. Gave her comfort, he supposed. As though she were not alone. As though there were people in the next room going on with their lives. Leaving, probably because it had become so integral to her environment that it didn’t even register, she had neglected to turn it off.
A program about rebuilding a home.
It was one modern equivalent of prayer, he supposed. Things got really, really bad, you sent out a plea, someone bailed you out. A nurse had been shot by a man she’d previously taken care of, who had developed an obsession with her. She was now paraplegic and it was all she and her husband could do to keep things together; even the house was falling down around them. So these group-hug types came in, sent the family off on vacation and, to the accompaniment of rock music, loud shouts and power tools, built them a new house.
“Where are you?”
Sayles surfaced. The screen saver had come up on the computer, a sunset over Camelback Mountain, so he’d been sitting at least fifteen minutes without seeing. Meanwhile Graves had rolled his chair over and sat rocking it back and forth in place, heel, toe, heel, toe.
There are days, Sayles thought, when alien abduction doesn’t sound so bad. He exhaled slowly. “What?”
“The thing that’s not quite right—like you’re always saying?”
“Okay.”
“This took some planning, some thought. The guy had to get in there, not get noticed.”
“Right. So he was probably wearing a suit, or shirt and tie, looked like he belonged, nothing to stand out—we’ve been over that.”
“He knows where Rankin is, or finds him without difficulty. Seems to know what he’s doing. They’re alone in there, he has a gun. So why isn’t Rankin dead?”
“We—”
“But that’s not my point. Look. The gun goes off, Rankin pulls the coffeemaker off the counter as he drops, people are down that hall and in there in seconds. Where’s the shooter go?”
“Who knows? Down the stairs. To the bathroom.”
“He’s just shot a man but he mixes right in, walks away. No one sees him. That’s not a thief, or an angry husband. That’s someone cool, someone who’s done this before.”
“A pro.”
Graves nodded. “But he doesn’t finish the job. He’s not interrupted, it’s just the two of them, and he walks away.”
Sayles hoped the aliens would arrive soon. He didn’t want to be here with Graves. He didn’t want to think about Rankin and what happened to him or why or who. Most of all, he didn’t want to go home. He hadn’t told Graves about Josie, just came on to work like usual. Strength was not about overcoming things. Strength was about accepting them.
Graves started away, then rolled back.
“Something else?” Sayles said.
“Yeah.”
“Okay …”
“It’s lunchtime.”
They were almost history, desk papers blowing up in the wake of their departure, when Sergeant Nichols stuck his head out to tell them they had one and they were just absolutely going to goddamn love it.
“Gotta be a pony here somewhere.”
Sayles looked at him.
“All the blood, I mean,” Graves said. “It’s an old joke. This guy—”
“I know the joke, Graves. We all know the joke.”
And there was indeed a lot of it. On the bed. Down the side of the bed. On the wall behind. In the slipper beside. Smeared everywhere on the floor.
“Janice Beck,” the responding officer said. “Thirty-one, lives alone according to the call-in, a neighbor, but evidence of both a male and a young child.”
“Tags?”
“Estranged husband.”
Classic tag. Right up there with the live-at-home son, discharged lover, double-dipping boss. Sayles looked over to where Graves stood by the splatter on the wall, holding his hand just over it the way people sometimes do over paintings at museums, moving the hand around. Patterns.
“Recent?”
“Better than a year, neighbor says.”
“Child?”
The officer shrugged.
“And no body, Dispatch said.”
“Just this.” He nodded toward the bed. “Car’d been in the driveway three, four days, maybe longer, no sign of activity. Neighbor came over, no response, called it in.”
Sayles looked at the borders of the pool by the bed. “Blood’s not that old. Three, four days.”
“Starts to congeal in three to five minutes once it’s exposed to air,” Graves said as he joined them. “Depending on temperature and—”
“Large woman? Small?”
“Five-six or so, by the neighbor’s judgment.”
“Then, that much blood, it’s gotta be better than forty percent of her volume. There’s a body. You did the walk-through, right?”
“Right. After we spoke with the neighbor, came in and found this.”
“Entry?”
“Took a crowbar to the front door. Locked—back one, too.”
“Air’s set at sixty-eight,” Graves said from the hall. “Dishes washed and in the drainer. Towels, washrags hung neatly in the bathroom, look fresh. Over-the-counter sleep aid, bottle of Claritin that looks almost full.”
“Closets?”
The officer nodded. “Clothes, boxes, shoes. Couple of unused suitcases, tags still on them. And no, I didn’t touch anything. Eyes only.”
Sayles took a closer look, thinking they mostly looked like kids these days. But this one didn’t. The odometer had been around a time or two. Fiftyish, but with the attitude of someone much younger. Interesting. “I didn’t ask,” he said.
“And I appreciate that.”
Sayles could hear Graves moving around in the front room. Out the window he watched the officer’s partner pace the afterthought of a backyard and alley. His age, mid-twenties, with that brush-cut hair, you could bet on his calling it checking the perimeter.
Graves hollered in, “Lab’s on the way.”
The officer stepped to the window and tapped at it, beckoned. “You okay with the scene here, Jack and I’ll get started on the house-to-house.”
“Sure thing. Good job, by the way.”
“Not my first time at bat.”
Sayles walked to the other side of the bed, opened the drawer of the mismatched nightstand there, shut it, and peered into the space between headboard and wall. Honeycombs of cobwebs in there. The bed wasn’t square to the wall. The nightstands weren’t square to wall or bed. Even the ceiling looked off plumb, cockeyed. Settling? Or just hasty workmanship?
The floor was laid with tiles from the fifties. Sayles remembered his old man putting down tiles like these in the house on Fisher Road, covering up what he now knew to be a gorgeous old wood floor. Some kind of sealer that never quite dried, then a paste of black, tarlike goop. The tiles were thick as dinner plates. Had to cut them, carefully, with a knife like Captain Hook’s hand, press them in place with a roller that went toe to toe with the old man in weight. Sayles was four or five at the time.
And something now was nibbling at his heels, trying to break through into consciousness.
He paced the room, over to the ancient oak dresser with silver-spotted mirror, no photographs or keepsakes stuck in at the join of wood and glass, back to the bed, to the shelves on L brackets by the door (a bud-shaped flower vase half filled with coins, seven well-read historical novels in paperback, envelopes neatly squared and bound with wide rubber bands, a coffee mug of pens, pencils, and pipe cleaners), peered into the closet and half bath.
Something.
It was the smell, he finally realized, reaching past all the blood, through all those years.
Camphor.
Mothballs.
He stood by the cedar chest in the room’s corner remembering the one his mother had when he was a kid. He didn’t know what happened to it, it wasn’t there by the time he was puttering about the house on his tricycle, but he remembered the smell. The chest was filled with sweaters and heavy clothes they never wore, linens and towels kept for guests they never had. And it was forbidden to him.
Beneath the cushions atop, it apparently having served as a makeshift sofa, the cedar chest wasn’t quite closed, and the smell, the camphor smell, was coming from within.
Sayles removed the cushions and opened the chest knowing what he would find. It was a small chest, too small. There were marks on her torso where the killer had knelt on her to force her body inside. Her neck and arms had been broken in the process. Later they would find the child’s body below hers. The child had been alive when put into the cedar chest. He had died of suffocation. Both of them had smiley-face stickers on their foreheads.
