by J L Aarne
Rainer watched him from his seat, blue eyes cool and assessing. Then he stood and went with Ezekiel to the door. “Whatever you need,” he said. “I’m glad to help if I can.”
At the door, Rainer stood leaning just inside the threshold as Ezekiel stepped outside and looked down the long walkway to the other side of the apartment building. The building was shaped like a bracket symbol, parking lot in the middle where the residents could step outside of their doors and look down onto the roofs of their cars. If Rainer didn’t keep his drapes closed, there was a straight view across the lot right into his window. Ezekiel bet he kept them closed.
“Can I ask you a personal question, Agent Herod?”
Ezekiel looked at him. Rainer was still leaning there in the doorway, calm and at ease, cigarette held pinched between finger and thumb of his hand, which was resting against his thigh. The midday light threw him into stark relief, revealing every crease and wrinkle that made most people appear less lovely than they were under artificial light, but not Rainer. He had faintly dark stains beneath his eyes that were not the shadows of his lashes but signs of sleeplessness. His hair was untamed, sticking up in places like it had been finger combed—by himself or possibly someone else. His expression was one of open curiosity, but under it, where he truly resided, he was cunning. He was taking Ezekiel’s measure, too.
“You can ask,” Ezekiel said.
Rainer flicked ash off the end of his cigarette. “Have you ever killed anyone in the line of duty?”
“Yes,” Ezekiel said. He did not attempt to justify it or explain himself. “A few.”
Rainer tilted his head. “How about when you weren’t on duty?”
Ezekiel didn’t speak, he only looked at him, met his gaze and held it. Like the first time they had met in Rainer’s office, an understanding passed between them. They both smiled slowly and Rainer dropped his head in a nod, acknowledging it.
We understand each other.
I’m watching you. I see you. I’m going to get you.
No, you’re not, but you are welcome to try.
It was all a game to Rainer, Ezekiel realized. One he did not believe he would lose. Right now it was just a small one, just a taste of it. A cat and mouse game with two cats and no mice. It did occur to Ezekiel that he might have started something bad by poking at the monster that was Rainer Bryssengur’s true self and waking it up, but rather than make him anxious or cautious, the idea excited him.
Rainer saw that excitement flash in Ezekiel’s eyes and felt his blood rush a little faster in response. He had been so bored lately. Ezekiel Herod appearing in his office weeks before had at first set off little alarm bells and had him cursing himself for his mistakes, but now those mistakes were beginning to look positively serendipitous.
Chapter 8
The case file on the murder of Robert Weaver and the ME’s report were on Ezekiel’s desk when he returned to work. He closed the door, sat behind his desk and began to read. It was familiar and, as he read, the little itch of familiarity became a burn.
Robert Weaver, age forty-seven, had worked at a toy store in the mall. He was a bachelor, originally from Arizona, two younger sisters and a younger brother who had committed suicide when was thirteen and Robert was in high school. Mother and father then retired to California, where Dad died of a heart attack two years later. The sisters were married, had kids, and had not spoken to their brother for several years before his death. He had volunteered for a disadvantaged youth program at one of the local middle schools.
Robert Weaver had been very good at hiding it, but he had been a murdering pedophile with a penchant for little boys. Little boys with dark eyes and light hair about the same age as his little brother had been when he died. At the time of his death, four children had gone missing who fit his type. Three of them had been found buried in the garden in his back yard after his murder, the fourth one was still missing and unaccounted for. Whoever had killed the man had done the world a service.
The medical examiner’s report was what really intrigued Ezekiel though. Robert Weaver had been cracked open like a melon with surgical precision. The autopsy revealed that he had still been alive while he was dismembered. Traces of ketamine were found in his blood; the killer had subdued him then got him up on his kitchen table and opened him up while he was conscious, immobile and fully aware of what was happening to him. The killer was clearly a sadist and it was sexual in that regard, but there had been no sign of sexual assault. His blood had an overabundance of adrenaline in it, too, indicating that at some point Robert Weaver had lost consciousness and the killer had revived him.
The house was clean, not as much as a fiber or fingerprint out of place. Not fire, but ammonia had been used to wipe everything down, but in most other respects the murder was very similar to those committed by The Lamplighter. Eerily similar. Impossibly similar.
Rainer Bryssengur was the Copycat Ripper, Ezekiel was almost sure of it. He had no reason to believe that he had killed Robert Weaver other than his proximity to where the man had lived, but that was enough to make him a suspect in Ezekiel’s mind. And whoever had killed Robert Weaver was almost certainly The Lamplighter.
Robert Weaver’s top two canine teeth were missing. His organs had also been removed from his body, but that had not been what killed him, it was done after. He had died from a single small slice to the heart from a scalpel. The killer had cut into the still beating heart and taken a sliver of meat out of the muscle. The tiny piece of heart meat had not been found at the scene.
“You ate it, didn’t you?” Ezekiel asked, staring at a photograph of Weaver’s heart. He was smiling. “You sick fuck. You ate it.”
This was the ritual that the fire concealed from them. This was the killer’s signature; not the fire but the heart.
He remembered the drawing on the wall in Rainer’s office. The only picture or art anywhere in the room. A medical student’s drawing, probably his own, of a human heart. It wasn’t evidence. Nothing with Rainer was, but Ezekiel knew all the same, and the monster was turning out to be more vicious than he had originally imagined.
He put the heart photo down and picked up another one of the crime scene, but before he could look at it, he yawned. It was a deep yawn that hurt his jaws. The exhaustion that had been lurking around beneath the surface of all the caffeine he had been consuming was beginning to rise up to the top. He could feel it making his limbs heavy and his eyes hot and sore. It had been nearly one hundred and twenty hours since he’d last slept. He had been known to go an entire week before, but that was actually pretty rare. He was dead tired and his body was letting him know he needed to sleep.
His hand shook as he set down the crime scene photograph and reached for his coffee cup. He drank the cold, black dregs at the bottom and yawned again, shaking with it. “No,” he muttered, setting the cup back down.
He stood, pulled his jacket on and gathered up the files from his desk. He would go home, take a shower, maybe even a cold one to help him wake up a little, drink a pot of coffee, then go wait for Professor Bryssengur to return home. Then… well, then he would decide what to do with him.
The prospect excited and pleased him and he was walking brusquely as he left the federal building and went to his car. He beat the afternoon traffic by a couple of hours and was still humming with energy as he walked in the door, but a little voice in the back of his mind that knew about these things from years of experience warned him that it was only the last gasp of a dying man. That energy wasn’t going to last.
Ezekiel told that voice to go to hell.
Jacob was in the living room reading when he got home and he looked up. His expression slipped quickly from calm gladness to see him into alarm when he got a good look at him. He put his book down and got up.
“Zeke, sit down. You look like you’re going to fall over,” Jacob said. He put a hand on Ezekiel’s shoulder.
Ezekiel patted him and walked on by him toward the stairs. “No, I’m fine. Real
ly,” he said. “I just need to shower, maybe change my clothes.”
“Oh, God,” Jacob said, following after him. “You are not fine. You’re going to pass out any minute. You know the signs by now, Zeke. Please, just come to bed. I’ll lay down with you until you sleep.”
“No, I can’t do that. I have work to do,” Ezekiel said.
He went into the bathroom, swaying against the doorframe for a moment before jerking himself up, and started to remove his clothes. It took him much too long to slip a button through a buttonhole and he was getting irritated with it when he decided to take his shirt off over his head.
Jacob stood in the doorway watching him and sighed. “Ezekiel, you need to sit down. You certainly can’t fucking drive like that,” he said.
“I drove here fine,” Ezekiel said. He tossed his shirt aside, hitting the cup on the sink with it and knocking it onto the floor.
Jacob raised an eyebrow at his back. There was a large tattoo of an eye between his shoulders and beneath it the declaration “We Never Sleep” and it was really just too ironic right now for words. “You are going to fall or sit down somewhere far away from the bed and Zeke, you’re big and I’m not. It’s a lot of work to move your deadweight.”
“Then throw a fucking blanket over me and leave me where I land,” Ezekiel said. He was getting annoyed with this (old) argument. “I’ve got something important to do. I can’t lay around in a damn bed right now.”
“I don’t think your body or your brain really cares about all that,” Jacob said.
Ezekiel kicked his pants aside and got into the shower. He turned it on frigid cold and still his eyes drooped when he stepped beneath it. It would be so easy to close his eyes for a minute, tune Jacob out and let the ice needles stab him to numbness.
“Ezekiel!” Jacob snapped.
Ezekiel jerked awake and reached for the shampoo. His hand shook and the bottle clattered to the floor. “Jakey, just go make me some coffee, okay?” he asked. “I’m fine. I’m really okay. I’m not going to pass out. I’ve got too much to do right now. You don’t understand. Just… please?”
Jacob sat down on the lowered toilet seat. “I’ll make you coffee if you can still get out of the shower under your own power,” he said, propping his chin on his hand. “Just once, it would be so nice if you would be sensible about this and sit down on the bed so I don’t have to carry or drag you through the house.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry to be such a burden,” Ezekiel muttered.
“You should be.”
Ezekiel ducked his head under the cold water to rinse his hair. He was moving much more slowly than was natural and his usually competent fingers were clumsy as thick sausages. The soap slipped from his hand, hit the wall and bounced into the bottom of the bathtub. He stared down at it and pictured himself bending down to pick it up. Then he did and felt the blood rush to his head when he stood back up.
When he was done, Jacob stood by while he dried himself and Ezekiel tried not to resent that, but it wasn’t easy. He wanted to tell Jacob that he didn’t need a damn babysitter, but Jacob would only tell him that in fact he did at times like this because he was prone to clumsiness and accidental self-harm.
He wrapped a towel around his waist and went across the hallway to their bedroom with Jacob trailing behind him. “I’m fine. I’ve told you I’m fine. I even got out of the shower on my own, so will you go make coffee and leave me alone?” Ezekiel said.
Jacob frowned at him for his rudeness, but after considering it for a second, he left.
Ezekiel got dressed slowly. There was no other way it could be done; he was moving so slow it was like his blood had developed the thickness of tar. He made the mistake of sitting on the side of the bed while he put his shoes on and that was nearly his undoing. He roused himself by remembering the heart. Heart meat, heart drawing, Rainer Bryssengur and his hearts. What was that about? The psychopath without a heart was, like the tin man, looking for one? No, that couldn’t be right. It seemed too simple and somewhat stupid for a man who did not strike him as being either.
Ezekiel shook himself and got up again. He could smell the coffee Jacob had made and it didn’t wake him up, but he was drawn to the scent, hoping it would help him remain conscious. Just a little longer, he thought as he made his way downstairs to the kitchen.
Jacob watched him closely as he walked across the room and put a cup of steaming coffee into his hands. Ezekiel sipped it and leaned back against the counter. His eyes fell closed and he didn’t really notice.
“Baby, why do you do this to yourself?” Jacob asked. He brushed his fingers through Ezekiel’s hair, pushing it back and petting him in a soothing way. “You know the world won’t end if you just stop for a few hours, right?”
“Not the point,” Ezekiel said. He was slurring and he could hear it himself now. “I don’t care too much about the world anyway. This… This is important though.”
“I know, but you need to sleep,” Jacob said.
Ezekiel growled softly down low in his throat in irritation—at Jacob for harping on it and because unfortunately it was true. He took another drink of coffee and opened his eyes. “I have to do this first. It’s important.”
“You need to sit down is what you need to do,” Jacob said. He pushed Ezekiel to the kitchen table and down into a chair, something he could not have managed if Ezekiel had been in any condition to fight him about it. “You are swaying. You’re like a drunk. You remember that hotel in Austin? The one with the marble floors in the bathroom you tested your skull on?”
Ezekiel drank his coffee, not really listening and said, “Mhmm.”
Jacob stood behind him and rested a hand on his back between his shoulders, gently massaging. “I’m just glad you didn’t get in an accident on the way home.”
Ezekiel’s eyes slipped closed again and he slumped a little forward. Jacob caught his arm and pulled him back before he could fall out of the chair to the floor. He also took the coffee cup from his hand and put it aside.
“Okay, my love, here we go,” Jacob muttered, getting an arm around him to haul him out of the chair. Ezekiel leaned on him, still feebly fighting to stay awake, and Jacob half carried him out of the kitchen. “I believe you’ll be camping out on the sofa this trip,” he said.
Ezekiel grunted and grumbled unintelligibly.
“Yes, I’m sure the fate of the universe hangs in the balance,” Jacob said. He led Ezekiel to the sofa and lowered him down onto it. “However, I don’t care very much about the world either, so you’re going to have a nap, that’s what you’re doing. I’ll go get your pajamas.”
He left and Ezekiel’s head lolled back on the back of the sofa loosely. He was still conscious but barely and he had time enough to think that he should call someone, maybe Crewes, and let them know he wasn’t going to be in to work the next day. Probably not the day after either. He would not give them Rainer; that was his, but he should let them know and assign someone to take over. He had absolutely nothing left in the gas tank. He should… but he couldn’t. Then he was asleep.
Chapter 9
Tuesday morning, the boy who was the reason Rainer had cut open Robert Weaver on his kitchen table was outside his door vomiting over the railing. Caleb lived with his alcoholic mother Laura in the apartment next door and the past year or two he had been gradually following in her drunken footsteps. He wasn’t much of a boy anymore, but he wasn’t yet a man. His tolerance for alcohol was still pretty low.
Rainer took his coffee outside and went to lean on the railing beside him, sipping it while Caleb got himself under control. “Good morning,” he said.
Caleb wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and glanced at Rainer. His hazel eyes were bloodshot, his face was pasty and sweaty, his black and red dyed hair was a rat tangle mess. “I’m sorry, Mr. Bryssengur,” he croaked.
“I don’t care as long as you don’t throw up on my car,” Rainer said.
It looked like Caleb had managed to aim for an e
mpty parking space. Rainer had a lit cigarette held against the handle of his coffee cup and offered it to him. Caleb took it with a shaking hand and took a drag.
“You look like you could use a drink,” Rainer said.
Caleb made a disgusted sound in his throat and shook his head. “God, no. I’m so hungover right now.”
Rainer took his cigarette back from him. “You might feel better.”
Caleb just shook his head again and continued looking miserable. He was a seventeen year old latchkey kid with a mother who was rarely sober and never happy and a father in prison for nearly beating her to death. It didn’t take much to make him look miserable. It was right there behind his eyes all the time.
The door to Caleb’s apartment opened and his girlfriend Betty walked out, blinking against the bright light like a half blind nocturnal animal. “Oh, God, the sun makes it worse,” she said hoarsely, shielding her eyes with one hand.
Betty didn’t even seem to notice Rainer. She went to stand with Caleb and slumped on her elbows on the railing on his other side. She glanced down and saw his vomit on the pavement below and laughed, which apparently hurt because she groaned and winced like she’d been stabbed.
“Your mom’s still in the bathroom,” she told Caleb. “I have to pee.”
Caleb sighed, ran a hand through his hair and stood up. “I’ll see if she’ll come out,” he said and went inside.
Left alone with him, Betty noticed Rainer and tried to smile. It looked more like a grimace. She was older than Caleb, but she wouldn’t have looked it except for the thickly smudged eye makeup below her eyes. Which still didn’t make her appear old so much as incredibly tired.
“Rough night?” Rainer asked.
“Not really. It was a Monday so, you know, the club wasn’t real busy, but Jesus I drank too much,” she said.
Betty was a stripper at a titty bar downtown. Rainer had no idea where Caleb had met her but she’d been introduced to Rainer about six months earlier. She was probably the one who had bought the beer.
