I ran through the house quickly, hiding anything that could look odd at all, like the articles on the bedroom wall, which I tore down and stuffed under my lumpy mattress, and the old rifle I had perched against my nightstand, should anyone ever be unlucky enough to think they could sneak in at night and get away with it. The rifle went under the bed.
I ran into my kitchen, where I had that scumbag’s hunting knife on the counter. I hid it under the sink, where I had a collection of cobwebs that would make Dracula blush.
In the living room I had a book out that I was reading at the time. I quickly stuffed it under the couch cushions, and, as far as I could see, that covered all the bases. I closed all the doors in the house so he wouldn’t be able to look around without being extremely rude. I thought about what would happen if I had to knock his block off for snooping around my house, and just then, the doorbell rang.
The doorbell used to play “O Come All Ye Faithful,” but after years of inactivity, it sounded like a dying robot. I swung the door open, and there he stood.
He had a thin beard and wore clothes that smelled like sweat and wet earth. His hair was slicked back with what smelled like dirty water, and dark rings circled his eyes like hungry sharks. His hands were shaking.
I led him into the living room and helped him sit in my recliner. He sank into it like it was his bed at home.
“I haven’t slept in two days,” he said as he smiled nervously, perhaps in a vain attempt to bolster his clearly fractured manhood. “There’s a lot of work getting done.”
He took full advantage of my naked-lady ashtray and lit a smoke. I lit one too, and hurried into the kitchen for a glass of water for the man. I didn’t want to give him caffeine. He looked dehydrated. When I came back with it, he sucked the glass down in one hungry gulp, and then burped.
“I don’t want the wife seeing me like this,” he said, looking at his shaking hands.
“Don’t worry. I’ll tell her you’re here.”
“You don’t mind?”
“Of course not,” I lied.
“Thanks. I had to get out of there, you know …”
“I know.”
“I know you do. Seeing that … it was the worst thing I ever …”
“Tell me what you know,” I said. I knew I had a small window of opportunity to ruthlessly pick his brain, having caught him in a highly weakened state. I needed everything he had.
“It was horrible,” he mumbled, settling further into the soft chair.
“Don’t pass out on me. Sleep will come, but you need to talk to me.”
“Oh, Marley, always digging for information. You’re like Nancy fucking Drew.”
“Yeah, that’s right,” I said. “Make me happy, man.”
“It was horrible. He ripped her up, man, like when you gut a fish. He just opened her up …”
“Were the others like that?”
“Yeah. Most of them.”
“They told you this?”
“Pictures. They have pictures of all of ‘em.”
“Do you have the pictures?”
“Marley …”
“Are they in your car?”
He nodded.
“You got anything else in the car?”
“Just my files.”
Once he passed out, I’d snatch his keys and do a little research of my own.
“And it was the same thing this time as all the others? Flowers in the eyes?”
“Yeah,” he said.
“White?”
“Red.”
“Red? They were white for Judith Myers, there were white roses. Was this the only time they were red?”
“No. It’s always some color or other. Like, whatever he could find, what was around. Or whatever struck him. That’s what they said.”
“Who’s they?”
“The feds.”
“The feds are here? Do they have a suspect?”
“They have what they called a ‘profile.’ They have a basic idea of what kind of person this killer is, but they don’t know who. They don’t have a suspect.”
“What the fuck is the profile?”
“It’s complicated.”
“But they don’t have a suspect? Is that what they said, or is that what you know?”
“No, I know it. They said the same. You should’ve been a cop.”
“Not with my track record,” I joked. “Were any of these girls drugged at all?”
“No. Some are known to have a drink now and then, like Gloria Shaw, but it doesn’t seem to be relevant to anything.”
“Any religious articles left around the body?”
“No. Why?”
“In Edenburgh a church was busted into the same night that Myers got it. Same thing happened here. Just an idea. Do the feds see any religious connection at all?”
“No. They see a sick fuck. Like you do.”
“How else was she hurt?”
“No bruising, really. Just some about the head, the mouth, like he’d grabbed her, but she was bound.”
“How?”
“Hands, mouth, feet.”
“With what? Cords? Ropes? Socks? What?”
“It seems to be twine,” he said. “It cut into her. Tape on the mouth.”
“Any fingerprints on the tape?”
“No tape left behind. Just the sticky residue. I guess he took the tape with him. And the bindings.”
“And they’re all like that?”
“Yeah, most of ‘em.”
“Was there a weapon left behind? Anywhere?”
“No.”
“What happened to the eyes?” I asked. He swallowed and said, “No one knows.”
“What’s he doing the cutting with?”
“Something sharp, Marley, I don’t fucking know. Talk to a fucking metallurgist.”
“Same injuries every time?”
“No.”
“What’s changed?”
“Jesus, it’s gotten so much worse,” he said, his eyes as sad as they’ve ever been.
“It always does,” I said. “Was anything left behind? Anything
at all?”
“No. Well …”
“What?”
“There was an empty film box on the dirt road that runs along the edge of the property.”
“Like what? Like, for a video? A tape?”
“Film. For pictures. Color. Polaroids.”
“Pictures,” I said.
Polaroids: a scumbag’s best friend. Any lowlife in the world with a few extra dollars can pick one of those cameras up and document whatever heinous act he could possibly think of, and no one would ever know it.
“There was a spent cartridge, and the cardboard box for a new cartridge, like he had used one up and had to load another.”
“Was the box new? Like, it rained last week, so … was it rainedon? Was it moist at all?”
“No,” he said, “the box is in as good a condition as it could get.”
“But the little black screen that shoots out of a Polaroid when you put the thing in the cartridge … that wasn’t around?”
He didn’t answer me. I looked over at him, and his hands weren’t shaking anymore. He was out cold. I put my hand on his and squeezed. He was a fucking saint.
“Arright, Detective. Enjoy the hospitality,” I whispered. “I’ll call the wife.”
His cigarette still burned in the ashtray. I put it out and drew shut the curtains. After that, I worked my nerves up a bit and called Martha from the kitchen.
“Pearce residence,” she said in her squeaky, little voice.
The man had married a mouse.
“Hey, Martha, it’s me,” I said softly.
She didn’t say anything right away. She didn’t have my voice memorized unless I said something vulgar. “It’s Marlowe,” I said. “He’s not here,” she said briskly.
“That’s why I’m calling. Just to let you know that your man’s passed out on my recliner over here on King Street.”
“Why?” she asked accusingly, as if to say, “What did you do to my man?”
“He’s in a bad way here because of the case, and he told me to tell you that he doesn’t want you seeing him this way.”
“Is he hurt?”
“No, but he looks like shit, Martha. I kid you not.”
“Oh, my baby …” she said, referring to her husband. I couldn’t help but smile.
“But how’s the tyke?” I asked. “Coming along well?”
“Quite,” she said.
“You guys pick a name yet?”
“No.”
“You’re running out of time, Martha. How about ‘Marley’?”
“No, I don’t think so,” she said. “We’re expecting a lady….”
“Arright. At least I tried. I’ll have him call when he wakes up, okay? Take care.”
“Yes, you too,” she said, not meaning it.
“Good night,” I sang.
She hung up, obviously disgusted.
It comforted me to know that I could still have that effect on women.
I checked to make sure Pearce was still in sleepy land. He was. I could have wrapped him in Christmas lights if I wanted to. I went through his pockets till I found his car keys. Then I went over to the window and peeled back the dusty curtain. His car was halfway up my driveway, blocking in my truck.
I went out. The night was dark and cool. The wind carried in its waves the smell of cooked food from somewhere close by. I peeked in through the windows of Pearce’s car and saw nothing. I opened the trunk.
There, between the extra tire and the first-aid kit, was a cardboard accordion folder stuffed to the gills with papers. It was held shut with one of those giant rubber bands that only mailmen seem to have access to. I lifted the folder out and was surprised at the weight of it.
The night was still and quiet. I heard the beating of wings, and a lone cricket singing, but the sounds of men were nowhere to be found. Then, off in the near distance, somewhere behind me, I heard a noise like a twig snapping. I was immediately brought to attention—a leftover symptom of being in war—and couldn’t help but think that I was being watched, that someone had misplaced a step. That a gun was pointed at me.
I slammed the trunk, crouched, and hustled backward into the house, scanning the horizon the whole way. I saw nothing, but I locked all four locks on the front door.
I went through the documents in the bedroom with the door locked. I wasn’t one for technical information. I mean, I wasn’t a goddamn sleuth, but I was able to piece together enough from the pictures. They say a thousand words, don’t they?
The first murders were in California.
Those early murders were the ones he learned from, the ones that gave him the lesson that he could do whatever he wanted to and get away with it, that given enough time he could do whatever his sick mind came up with.
The first two victims looked different from the others. The girls were escorts, which, considering this was California we were talking about, probably meant they were struggling actresses. They were strangled, beaten, bludgeoned. Roses were incorporated, but in that first kill, which occurred in a motel room, a rose from a nearby dozen was singled out and placed atop her corpse, almost as if it were a decoration. The star at the top of the Christmas tree. Or a sick gift.
For that second girl, the stem of the rose was pushed up inside her.
The first two were the only two that weren’t marked with semen. With the third, traces of semen were found just feet away from the dead girl’s body. He couldn’t take it anymore.
After that, the sky was the limit, and like Pearce said, things had just gotten worse. That’s the weird thing about serial killers: the more they do it, the more sophisticated they get, yet at the same time, they become more animalistic, more savage, as time goes on.
The rest of the crime-scene photos, when viewed chronologically, seemed like a virtual flip-book showing how the female body could be mutilated to greater and greater degrees. The roses became his calling card, placed in the sockets where a pair of eyes should have been. The question was, did he do it because he thought it was important, or did he do it just to let people know that he was the guilty party?
They didn’t seem to have any hair or blood from the killer, but if they had semen, that meant he left a scent, and if he left a scent, I had the utmost confidence that the wolf—all teeth and nails and bad intentions—would hunt the man down without even breaking a sweat.
I put everything back in the folder and went back out to the living room. Pearce was still sleeping in the chair. I peeked out through the curtain, and even though I spent an extra minute looking around out there, I saw nothing. I had to presume that the sound of the snapping twig was caused by a cat, or a dog. I unlocked the door, ran to the car, put the folder back, and zipped back into the house.
I put the keys back in Pearce’s pocket, along with a handwritten note I hoped his wife would find. She didn’t like me for any particular reason. I figured I ought as well give her one. The note read:
Danny—
You know I have been with a lot of men, but no one has ever given me better cock than you. I love your cock inside me. It fills me up like I’m a balloon. I know you still love your wife, but if I could feel you cum inside me every day of the week, I would die a happy transvestite.
Love—
Tommy Candy
I threw a moth-bitten blanket over him that probably smelled like phantom cats, turned out the lights in the living room, and locked myself in the bedroom. It was two-thirty in the morning. I had to be at the restaurant at seven. I would have liked to have slept a few hours, but Pearce snored.
NINE
More people than I had ever known showed up to pay their last respects to Judith Myers. Pearce was there, at least in spirit, because his mind was fried. I think the only respite he’d had since Gloria Shaw’s body was found was when he dozed off at my place. Since then, all he did was work. I was there in a cheap brown suit I had gotten at a thrift shop for fifteen dollars. It was shiny at the elbows, and was probably last worn by the man who had died in it back in the mid-seventies. It fit like a glove. I was also sporting a pair of black shoes I had to pay a little more for—men don’t part with nice black shoes until they are destroyed—and the sunglasses I wore when I kicked that guy’s ass a handful of days before.
There were a lot of church people at the funeral, as well as students and friends of the dead girl. Everyone else was media, and if not that, then federales in disguise, which meant, as far as I knew, that they weren’t wearing their earpieces with their black suits and ties. I guess for a funeral they were dressed as inconspicuously as they could be. In a black Chrysler off a ways, and also out by a willow tree, were a couple of lawman-photographers taking pictures of all the people who showed up. Sickies apparently had the bad habit of showing up at the funerals of their prey. I had to presume that they would later compare their new pictures to the photos taken at the funerals in the other states, see if anyone matched up.
As the priest went on with his shtick about eternal life coming down to the little town princess, I started thinking about all the people I’d put down over the years. I wondered if any of them got any kind of burial service. As far as I know, there just wasn’t a whole hell of a lot left of them to bury—and that kind of got me all maudlin. There were a handful I’d have liked to have seen off, if for no other reason than I’d know where to go back to if I ever felt like pissing on someone’s grave.
It wasn’t often that I felt completely justified sending the wolf after a particular person. Sometimes I had to settle for someone who didn’t really deserve to die. But I had zero sympathy for my new target. In regards to pissing on someone’s grave, I figured if things worked out right, I could start off with this fucking Rose Killer, once I got my mitts on him.
TEN
I woke up on the day of the full moon in a great mood, and why wouldn’t I have? The world was just hours away from havi
ng a creep known as the Rose Killer wiped from existence. Yeah, I felt pretty chipper indeed.
When I got to work my usual five minutes late, Anthony Mannuzza’s Mach 1 was parked out front, and he was leaning against the side of it with a cigarette in one hand and a handful of loose papers in the other.
I pulled up next to him and got out of the truck. I put my keys in my left hand just in case I had to put the right one to work.
He smiled. “I’ve been waiting for coffee.”
“Keep waiting,” I said, and I brushed past him to climb the stairs.
“Aren’t you even curious why I’m here?”
“I know why,” I said. “You’re a glutton for punishment.”
He smiled again and sidled up next to me. He showed me what the papers were—black-and-white photographs. The picture on top was an eight-by-ten shot of me in my suit and sunglasses.
He had been at the funeral.
“How the fuck did you take this without me seeing you?”
“Telescopic lens,” he said. “I have all kinds of equipment in the car.”
“I thought you were full of shit about being a picture man.”
“I wasn’t.”
“It’s a good picture,” I said honestly. “But if I’d have seen you, I would have broken your camera for taking it.”
“I know.”
I unlocked the door to the restaurant, and Anthony followed me in. Once I took all the chairs down and got the gear in the kitchen going, I made a pot of coffee. Outside, I saw Abe’s Buick pull into a spot, but he didn’t get out, the prick.
“Who develops these?” I asked. “I wouldn’t think the local pharmacy would do a nice job like this.”
“I do it myself.”
“What, like in a darkroom?”
“I do it in the hotel room. Turn out all the lights and so on. All the equipment fits in the car. I wouldn’t trust some small-town rummy with my negatives.”
“Not bad.”
“Of course,” he said. “I’m a fucking great artist.”
He showed me another shot of a woman and her baby, sitting near the big fountain in Applegate Park.
The Wolfman Page 9
