by Tammy Bird
A block from the house, he pulled over and parked. It was late evening, and dusk had settled, but blackness hadn’t yet blanketed his route or his midnight-blue, newly decaled truck. His fingers fumbled with the strings of the gray hoodie, his mind more on the sweet artist who lay waiting for him a block away than on getting the loops just right to secure the hood around his face.
He glanced into the rearview mirror and tucked his unruly curls back beyond the scrunched edges of gray. He lifted thin, gray gloves from the passenger seat and pulled them on. “Don’t let the anticipation get the best of you,” his internal creature from the deep said silently. He looked down to the phone in his hand. With one finger, he tapped out one word: “Here.” When he crossed over to Ocracoke tonight, the phone would be discarded.
He waited a few seconds to make sure there would be no response, pushed the back of the flip phone with his index finger until the spring let loose and the top popped shut, opened the truck door, and slid down to the sidewalk. Head down. Hands out. He fought his natural urge to put his hands in his pockets as he walked. Move slightly slower. Jasper’s a fisherman, not an EMS worker. He has nowhere to be and is in no hurry to get there.
He watched his feet all the way to the side door of the structure. The man is brilliant. I’ll give him that. The two purposefully passed in the grocery store yesterday morning. The man dropped a piece of paper into a pile of Granny Smith apples, and Brent picked it up with his forefinger against the green apple skin. He slid the apple into a plastic bag and the note into his jeans pocket. It was all so simple, and the crisp pop of the apple busting against the power of his teeth as he unfolded the note and read the words felt good:
“Wait for completion notification. Suitcase ready. Coordinates inside. Ocracoke. Last run. Away from the trails that coil from the stacking lanes. Dune marked.”
There were no plazas or businesses off the dock on the Ocracoke side. The deserted beaches ran for miles next to the road that led into town.
Brent reached the door in exactly one-hundred-and-one steps. He stood motionless for several seconds and let the sound of the ocean and the descending darkness move through his body. In front of him was the entrance to the now infamous Sandman’s lair. He shook out his arms at his side, letting the movement track naturally from arms to hands to fingers.
Like a ghost writer for the famous, Brent wanted recognition for his part in the production, but he knew his emotional and monetary livelihood was tied directly to never being acknowledged for his own creativity.
The crack in the whitewashed, wooden door wasn’t noticeable until you stood right in front of it. He reached forward. The door moved silently at his touch. For a moment, he let his eyes adjust to the new level of dark. Then he moved into the belly of the beast.
He stood in the dim light of the room. Eyes closed softly, he breathed through his nose, meditating to the scent of death. For a moment, he could take as much or as little time as he liked. The room was soundproof, the walls and floor concrete, thick, layered with varnish that made them easy to clean. The Roto-Rooter man. That’s me. In his mind, the old jingle started playing.
In the beginning, he was appalled that he allowed himself to be sucked into such circumstances. He even refused to help the third time he was summoned, but Sandman made it clear that refusal was not an option. “Watch what you say, boy. You’re part of my mess, and we both know how I clean up my messes.” His voice presented as even, soft, but Brent heard the message loud and clear. He never refused again. The rules of their relationship were simple ones: fewer words are always better; use a phone only until a job is finished; dispose of the phone the moment the word “complete” is typed; leave no trace in this room, in the yard, truck, or trail to indicate she was anywhere near; leave no trace he was here, no trace his boss was here; get in and out without raising suspicion; crop and Photoshop all photos so as to show faces in unnamable fashion; wait one month before posting any picture taken.
The last two rules were added in the years since the Internet had grown useful. Prior, he took photos only for himself. “A hobby,” he told the man. “Payment for keeping quiet.”
Each time Sandman needed his services, Brent would receive a note passed discreetly from hand to hand. Until 2004, the notes were their only communication. Then, for a while, a new phone was placed in a plastic bag in a dune as soon as another one was discarded. When there was a job to do, a one-word text came through: Apple, for the grocery store; Hole-in-one for the putt-putt windmill; Read, for the bookstore, third shelf, third book, mystery section. Now he found the phones through the underground web. They were untraceable that way. The key words remained the same.
When Brent wasn’t at work, he was content to spend his summers like any other twenty-something male raised on the water: windsurfing, kite-gliding, and looking for love. But as the years passed, he grew more agitated between kills. His job and his hobbies paled in comparison. His love life was nonexistent. He constantly craved the thrill and the artistry that could be achieved only when he was able to use a professional grade camera, like tonight.
He remembered the first time: Nadia Grey.
Nadia. He loved her so, as well as a sixteen-year-old could love. He remembered the curve of her breast under his shaking hand and her soft moan as he followed the instructions she whispered in his ear. He thought she was the one. He would have done anything for her. But she didn’t love him. She loved attention. Brent’s. Roger’s. Casper’s. Greg’s. How many others? He wanted to ask her after he found her with Roger that day. But his voice didn’t work when he opened his mouth. She didn’t see him in the doorway of her classroom, but Roger did. She was seated, head forward, gorgeous auburn hair flowing toward the desk, almost brushing the papers sprawled in front of her. Roger’s hands rubbed her neck, her shoulders; his fingers moved farther down her chest with each squeeze. As his eyes met Brent’s, he touched his fingertips to the edge of her breast and smiled as if to say, “I win. You lose.”
Brent wanted to hit him, to push him away. And then she moaned, a moan like he heard when his own fingertips moved across her skin. He felt a sob build that threatened to give him away. He ran down the hallway, past the blue lockers, past the trophy case where his science trophy sat alongside all the others, past the cafeteria, and out the heavy double doors. He ran and cried until his legs ached and his breath came in ragged gasps, until he was alone on the beach, away from all of them.
But he wasn’t alone that day. A man sat by himself on a checkered blanket, eating a sandwich. “Hungry?” the man asked him.
His stomach churned. He wanted to say no, but his body disobeyed his mind. He walked over and sat. For years afterward, he played the scenario over in his mind. Each time he chose to run. His fantasy didn’t change reality. He was a hero. He saved other boys from her spell when he sat with the man and told him why he ran and why he cried over his teacher.
As the horror of what happened faded, and as the man praised him over and over, the fantasy changed. He felt good about his part in Nadia Grey’s story.
By the time the man told Brent about another bad woman the next year, Brent was fully invested in their crusade against evil. With the second woman, he found himself turned on by the smells and drawn to the pale skin. She was like a blank canvas, and he was an artist.
He wanted the man to kill more, to give him more, but the man refused.
“No, Brent,” he said. “Taking a life is revenge for a crime so horrible that prison isn’t an option. These are crimes society ignores. Only a woman who viciously wrongs a child will pay this price.”
Brent really didn’t want people to die, but he did want the smell of blood. A body drained of life was quite beautiful. At nineteen, he became a volunteer for the Buxton Rescue Department, and two years later, he was a full-time paramedic for Hatteras Island Rescue. The job fed his basic need.
On those occasions, when a woman committed the ultimate sin, he was gifted not only
with death but with death delivered to a quiet cell where he could spend hours posing and photographing his subject in exchange for his services. He learned quickly that the most horrific women in life were often the sweetest in death. Their photographs fetched a handsome penny on the dark web where men and women searched for fodder for their darkest fantasies.
The room was dimly lit with one bulb that hung above a concrete floor. He moved farther into the room. To his left, the dark was darker. Elizabeth was in there. He moved through the entryway and flicked the switch. The room flooded with light. The sharp contrast to the light in the outer room assaulted his sight. He blinked rapidly as his eyes adjusted and he could cross the few feet from the entrance to the shower.
“Hello, Elizabeth. I’ve looked forward to meeting you.”
His eyes took in the pale beauty of her exposed skin, her pale blue eyes, and her pale pink lips. For a moment, he avoided the wide slash in her throat. Red. One of his favorite colors. It popped in the camera’s eye. He would capture it in the photos soon enough, but first a close-up of the soft blues and pinks. He knelt on one knee, steadied the camera by placing his elbow on the other knee, and leaned in. With his free hand, he brought blonde strands across one cheek. The camera’s eye captured one-and-one-half eyes, her nose, and three-quarters of her pale pink lips. He would blur the edges later.
His eyes traveled out to one shoulder and then the other. The man left her dressed. He didn’t understand this. Elizabeth was young, blonde. She was a beautiful artist. Maybe that’s the difference. He wouldn’t connect to her in the same way: artist to artist. He admired Elizabeth’s work that hung in the local beach gallery. It lined the walls every summer when tourist season began. People admired her use of vibrant color and bold brushstrokes, and by October each year, her work was gone. It didn’t sell quite as quickly as his work sold on the dark web. Perhaps it would, now that she was dead. He made a mental note to see if he could get his hands on some of her pictures.
He slowly removed one piece of clothing and then another. Each time, he took a few seconds to fold the cloth neatly and set it out of the scope of his canvas. Several times, he pulled his camera from his chest to his eye, adjusted the focus, added more of the picnic blanket and then less, shot from the corner of the basket with the wine bottle peeking from the corner, and then from the band of her paint-spattered blue jeans.
This time was better than many times in the past. It wasn’t unusual for the man to spoil the canvas before he arrived. He especially hated it when he had it packed and ready for transport. Transport and bury. I didn’t ask you here to have a party. She’s dirty. Get. Her. Out. The man’s words echoed in his head. Those times the process was quick, and his pictures were few and imperfect. Tonight was one of the good times. As the clock ticked away the late evening hours, he took time to revel in his craft, time to create a true masterpiece.
After all of Elizabeth’s clothes were removed, Brent let his eyes move to the slash. He remembered the first time, when he saw the same smooth cut through Nadia’s throat. He loved her as only a sixteen-year-old can love. He reached down and touched the raw flesh. It was almost hard to the touch, but not quite. He touched the flesh around Elizabeth’s wound. His finger sunk in the same way as it had that day. In both instances, too, the blood was congealed on the outside but released a sweet red stream when he pushed. He pulled his camera up to eye level and focused on the drop as it oozed downward. He turned the camera slightly to capture the trail of red from another angle.
His work focused on color. The right color pulled the personality from each person, like the purple that popped from his computer screen earlier in the day, the color of majesty, the color of a queen, a real estate queen.
He stood up and stretched. In the field, most of the photos were taken with his cell phone. Occasionally a medical investigator who fell for his flirting and kindness sent him high-resolution photos from her lab. But not for a while.
He looked at the screen on his camera and clicked back through a few shots. When he used a phone, he worked tirelessly at his computer to make sure he captured the true color and beauty of his subject. His continued success depended on it. When he used his high-resolution camera, the tool did the hard work for him and he could more easily relax into the shoot.
When he was satisfied with the current photos, he let his eyes roam over Elizabeth’s naked form as he thought about additional staging. “Dear, beautiful, Elizabeth,” Brent said, “I know just what we should do.”
He felt as giddy as a child on Christmas morning whose ears are filled with the sounds of a puppy’s yelp before they hit the bottom stair. The chains. He never used the chains. It would take planning to get Elizabeth from here to there without creating a mess, but he had several hours for that.
Silver and red. Merry Christmas to me.
****
Loud voices are not good. Marco cannot sleep when the voices are loud. Past eight fifteen. Lights out. Look out the window. No. Lights out. The lights are out. Where is the camera? Katia took it. Pictures coming out tomorrow. That’s what Katia said at eight ten. Katia did not lie to Marco. Pictures tomorrow.
Marco squished his eyes tight and tried to count like Katia taught him. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six.
Loud. Papi is loud at Katia.
Katia is loud at Papi.
Go to the window. Marco likes the night. The ocean. The sand.
What if the bad man is on the beach?
Marco did not like the bad man on the beach, the man in the black clothes. All black clothes. No face. Just a black night face. He didn’t like when he saw the bad man.
Pictures tomorrow. Marco liked pictures.
Good night, Katia.
Good night, Papi.
Good night, Marco.
Chapter Seventeen
Monday, November 26, 2018
Katia worked her first twenty-four-hour shift in over a week. It felt good to be back in the station instead of on the sidelines. She called home only three times from 7:00 Sunday morning until 7:00 this morning. In all fairness, she slept close to six of those hours. She was sidetracked by the continued harassment of reporters for another hour. And Papi told her not to call again after she called for the final time at 5:00 this morning.
“I told you I wouldn’t take him to the school, Katia Pilar. He’ll be in front of the TV when you get home.”
“Thanks, Papi. I’ll hurry.” Katia didn’t mention that she needed to pick up Marco’s pictures before she came home. She intended to do it Saturday, but Papi was at a job site, and she didn’t dare leave Marco with Mrs. Ellington again.
Katia looked at the two women who sat at the table with her. It still seemed surreal that one week and one day ago they came together with such force that their lives would forever be intertwined. Neither blinked an eye when she asked them to come over to look at the developed pictures, even though each was in the midst of her own crisis: Paige with the break-in and Zahra with her continued help on the case.
Now the three of them sat in Katia’s kitchen discussing the break-in at the training facility.
Paige and Zahra were debating the how. Katia was half-listening, her chair leaned back on two legs. Her mind was reeling. Why in the world was someone interested in getting their hands on transcripts from the facility? Why would they kill a rescue dog? Would Frankie have protected Paige? Would he have been cut open, too? It was unlikely the small pup would have offered much in the way of keeping someone out and would probably have suffered the same fate as Voltaire.
Katia eased her chair back on all fours and tuned into the conversation. “Bob said the pups in the facility were going crazy,” Paige told Zahra. “Woke him up. I’m far enough up the road I didn’t hear much.”
The ding of the oven timer interrupted their conversation, and all three women flinched.
Katia stood up and made her way to the kitchen. “My mom’s cinnamon rolls are the answer to everything.”
She attempted a smile.
“Holy crap, those smell amazing,” Paige said.
The women sniffed the air. Something about the sweet smell of fresh dough and cinnamon made the horrible easier to bear.
“Are those things ready?” Zahra asked.
“Yep. Ready.” Katia placed the plate of steaming rolls in the middle of the table and returned to the kitchen for three glasses of milk.
Paige and Zahra chewed mouthfuls of cinnamon goodness as they welcomed Katia back to the table.
“Oh. My. God. These are the bomb.” Paige swallowed and shoved another large bite into her mouth. “I need this recipe.”
“No can do, my friend. My mom would roll over in her grave if I gave it to anyone.”
The weight of the words turned the banter into silence.
Katia sighed. “Sorry. Bad choice of words.”
Paige shook her head. “Don’t be. We have to get used to it being a part of our life now.”
The thought of a murderer being close to Paige made Katia’s skin crawl. She cared about this woman. She wanted to kill the person responsible more in this moment than when she stood on the beach looking down at the bright-purple shoe of Gina Dahl.
Kindred spirits. Those were the words that came to her mind when she thought about her growing friendship with Paige. It was different from what she felt for Zahra. That relationship needed much more exploration when she wasn’t so mentally exhausted. After Elizabeth left her, she saw other lesbians only rarely and mostly at The Pink Clover. Now she was here with two, and that felt good in the midst of this horrible new reality.
Paige broke into her thoughts. “Want to give the boy-child a roll?” Paige motioned toward the living space where Marco sat cross-legged in the middle of the floor, Frankie’s head on one of his knees.
Katia looked through the archway at her little brother. Her father was right, he was now taller than her by a piece of an inch, and his voice, when he did talk, was growing deeper. “He had cereal. Maybe in a bit.”
