Her dropped jaw stayed where it was.
“Mota’s got an offworld girlfriend who helped him try to knock me off. I have to find out who she is and where she fits in.”
She closed her mouth and rubbed her face with her hands.
I kept dishing it out, puzzle piece after puzzle piece. Mota and Froelich were lovers. Froelich and Samusaka had matching tats. Froelich, Wu, and Mota were all in business together. Samusaka was the gay son of an oil baron whose family was less than cooperative.
Somehow, it all fit together. The lizard-man serial killer too. It all fit together.
I told her I’d put the puzzle together, and when I finished, I was going to destroy it. I’d blow the whole thing up, and I’d watch the fragments burn. Wu’s little girls deserved no less.
She listened to every word, sharp green eyes taking it all in.
“I need your help.”
“Quit the protection racket.”
Frustration spilled into my voice. “You need a power base to be chief.”
She shook her head no.
“This is how it’s done.”
“We’re doing this different.”
“Dammit, Maggie, you think you can get to the top by doing a good job? You think they look at attendance records? ‘Boy, she’s punctual, let’s make her chief’? To be chief you have to take it. It’s a taker’s world.”
“I won’t do it like you and Paul did. I won’t climb over the backs of pimps and hookers and drug kingpins. I won’t be corrupted.” She leaned forward like she was about to throw a dart. “I won’t let myself turn into you.”
The dart drove deep. Pierced me in a place so deep that a shallow man like me ought not to feel it.
She crossed her arms. Emerald eyes bored in. “Drop the protection racket or we’re done.”
Her will was so much stronger than mine, her moral center more fixed. Judging by the look on her face, she knew she’d won, and now she was just waiting for me to figure it out. I’d come here to remind her of why she needed me, but she’d upended the thing. She’d done it so skillfully, so completely that my arguments floated adrift, meaningless.
Nothing to do but marvel at what I saw in her at the beginning.
I surrendered with a defeated nod of agreement.
Her green eyes softened, emeralds becoming less cold, less chiseled. She shook her head at me with a disapproving smirk, then sat down next to me, letting out a what-am-I-going-to-do-with-you sigh on the way down. “A taker’s world? Have a damn heart, will you? It wouldn’t hurt to give a little.”
She was right. Always right.
I ran my fingers into my hair and instantly regretted it, the root of every hair feeling like a sharp needle against my burned scalp. After a prolonged wince, I said, “You may never get there doing it your way.”
“I know.” She sounded sure. Like she’d made peace with it.
“I can’t let Mota take his racket back. Not after what he did to Kripsen and Lumbela. They were my responsibility.”
“Drop the racket after we bring him down.”
We kept quiet for a long time, content to be in each other’s presence, listening to jungle rain drum on the roof and the patio tiles, reunited in our mission for change.
Change. Whatever that was.
eighteen
THE skiff rode low in the water. A tourist vessel. We had cushioned seats under our asses, elbow rests for our arms. Overhead, a red-and-white-striped tarp stretched over a metal frame, ropes of light twining around the poles.
Deluski and I sat near the back, Maggie and Josephs a row ahead of us. Maggie kept one of the boat’s floodlights trained on the riverbank, her face focused, concentrated. Light skittered across trees and tangled foliage. Jungle overflowed the riverbank like bread raised over a pan’s lip.
The pilot’s gray hair was tucked under a tied scarf, her cheeks wrinkled and wind chapped. She held the throttle open, the skiff plowing a deep furrow in the black water. Josephs had told her we’d lost a boat last night. “Came unanchored or some shit,” as he’d put it. He told her we wanted to search the riverbanks to see if it ran ashore. He didn’t mention the real goal of our search: bodies.
A list of monitor fun facts hung from a crossbar, the requisite campy chomp taken out of the corner. Did you know Lagartan monitors have four rows of teeth? Did you know they can stay underwater for forty minutes? Did you know monitors have redundant hearts?
Two hearts. Maggie’s early-morning words replayed in my head, how she told me to have a damn heart. As if I didn’t have one. As if the lizards were up a deuce on me.
I looked over at Deluski, at his world-weary eyes. They didn’t suit a kid his age. A young cop like him should be enjoying himself, chasing tail and partying his nights away. Not searching the river for the beheaded corpses of his comrades.
I pulled the big hunk of Chicho’s cash out of my pocket. I roughly split it in two and handed half over. He looked at the dough, his eyelids broadening. “What’s this for?”
I leaned over so he could hear me over the motor. “You’re the only one left. You get their cuts now.”
He nodded, his mouth screwed to one side. “Mind if I give some to Lumbela’s sister? Lumbela’s been supporting her. She has young ones.”
I didn’t want the details. The shit I’d started was rippling outward, sewage spilling from one life to the next. I didn’t need to know where it all went. I had enough wrecked lives to my name. “It’s yours,” I told him. “Do what you want with it. Got a pen?”
He fished in a pocket and pulled one out.
“Write this down.”
He nabbed an advert for the tour company from a plastic holder attached to the side rail.
I recited the Net address first, then a set of credentials that would give him access to Killer KOPs.
He looked at the paper. “What’s this for?”
“Your movie. Destroy it.”
His head snapped up, his eyes locking on to mine. “This the only copy?”
I nodded.
He shook his head like he couldn’t believe it. “You fucking with me?”
“No.”
He stared at the paper, lips moving as he read it to himself.
“You’re free.”
I waited for him to show some appreciation. A nice big You’re a lifesaver would’ve been nice. Or maybe a little I’m so lucky you came into my life. I would’ve taken anything, even a simple thank-you. But it didn’t come. He just folded the paper and pushed it into his shirt pocket, his face frozen in thought. Maggie said I should give a little. She didn’t say anybody would thank me for it.
Deluski leaned forward in his seat, fingers laced tight together. Must’ve been killing him not to be able to destroy the vid file right this second, but he’d wisely dumped his phone after last night’s escape.
I sat back, told myself it didn’t matter if I got any thanks, told myself to enjoy the comfy ride. I looked toward the shore: a dock jutted into the water, lights bobbing on either side, grills flaming up, the smell of lunchtime fish drifting on the air.
“You laying me off?” asked Deluski.
I spoke without looking his way. “Stay on or not. Your choice.”
“I’ll stay on until this shit gets resolved. Then I don’t know.”
I nodded. Fine.
Maggie pointed at a buoy. The pilot took her cue and aimed the boat in the direction of her extended finger. According to the report, Franz Samusaka, the oil man’s kid, was found in an old house built over the marshy runoff between the city and the spaceport. I thought it possible the killer would reuse the dump site.
Wu and Froelich’s heads had been recovered, but that left a lot of corpse unaccounted for.
The skiff sliced into a narrow channel. I looked at the pilot. The nerves on her face were as plain as the wrinkles, her thoughts easy to read. Why would your lost boat go drifting in here? I calmed her fears with cash, a few bills hitting the mark.
We putt-pu
tted through the dark, trees scratching the tarp overhead, hanging moss snagging on the vertical supports. A branch caught on the foremost pole and bent back like a whip, leaves scraping off before it slipped loose and slapped the next pole down. A dislodged gecko landed on the floor. Josephs pinned it under his shoe, picked it up and tossed the wriggler over the rail.
The channel widened. Maggie swept the floodlight left and right: tree trunks standing in still water, vines hanging down, fanned roots reaching into the water like green brooms. The motor churned through a patch of reeds, deep gurgles belching from the water. I leaned forward to peer over Maggie’s shoulder. Her digital pad showed a map of the exact location of where Samusaka’s body was found. We were close.
The marsh stayed connected to the river this time of year, shortly after the rainy season, when the water level was still high. But most of the year, it was a self-contained swamp, the narrow channel we’d just passed through becoming a bridge of land during the drier seasons.
Maggie guided the way with her gesturing hands as the pilot eased the skiff forward. The floodlight caught a post sticking out of the water, a bouquet of ferns sprouting from the top. Then another post emerged from the black, a second remnant of a long since collapsed dock. The pilot glided us alongside the sparse collection of pilings to a large, stilted house that stood at least two meters above the water.
“There.” Josephs pointed at a rope ladder dangling over the edge of a grand wraparound porch. The pilot idled the motor and let us coast the last bit to where Josephs grabbed the ladder. Holding us in close, he let Maggie start up first. Then went Deluski. I followed with my one-handed best. Going up wasn’t bad. Getting over the top was a challenge. Deluski had to drag my ass over by snatching hold of my belt.
Last, Josephs handed up a couple flashlights before starting the climb himself.
Maggie and Deluski ran the flashlight beams up and down the outer walls, illuminating peeled paint and furry moss. The place must’ve been something in its day, a vacation home built on a broad platform that had fared better than the dock since being abandoned who knew how many decades ago, probably when the spaceport was built so close.
We headed for the front door, the decking littered with brandy empties. I spotted a huffed-up tube of glue. Lizard-man was a huffer. I bent down and touched a finger to the spillover near the tube’s cap. It felt tacky. He’d been here recently.
I let Josephs bag the tube. If we were lucky, we might score a fingerprint.
Deluski stopped next to a hole in the floor and kept his light trained on it until we’d all safely passed. Josephs scraped open the single-hinged door. Inside, an old sofa sat in the middle of a large room, where there was more seating in the form of overturned crates and shine tubs. Curlicues of stripped wallpaper clung to the walls. So did the stink of stale booze.
This was a party den—tin cups and shot glasses, cig butts and O pipes, ashtrays made of cans sliced in half. A pile of shattered bottles sat under a broken-out window, the sill badly chipped and pocked. The local sport must’ve been throwing empties through the window from the couch.
Flashlights scanned the floor, where condom wrappers had gathered like fallen leaves. Deluski threw a light on a flickering poster strung from a dead chandelier, the strobing image some kind of music vid. “Teenagers.”
“Yep,” said Josephs. “Horny little bastards must come at night.”
Maggie aimed her light at a staircase. “Samusaka’s body was found upstairs.”
We stepped forward, floorboards creaking, and filed up the stairs. I felt the rumble before I heard it, a launching spacecraft shaking the steps under my feet. We topped the staircase, Maggie in front, Deluski right behind, Josephs and me in the back. The spacecraft’s roar intensified, walls shaking, our eardrums rattling with thought-piercing racket.
I plugged an ear against the deafening roar. I trailed in back, my nose wrinkling at the twinge of death on the air.
I followed the rest into a bedroom. The smell was getting riper, the screeching roar digging, drilling into my skull.
I scoped the scene, seized by the image before me. My jaws clenched and my innards twisted. The image overwhelmed me, my eyes protesting as much as my bombarded ears. Decibels drowned out all thought.
Two beheaded bodies were propped on a mattress. One on all fours, the other kneeling. Mounting. The bodies posed for an assfuck. They looked like mannequins, their skin shiny like polished plastic. But the smell. The smell left no doubt this was real flesh and bone.
The ship’s roar faded, replaced by a ringing in my ears. Drawing closer, I could see they were dickless, with meaty red gashes where their genitals should be. A meter-long spike ran through the two of them, pinning them together like a toothpick through a stuffed flatbread. It ran through the lower back of the kneeler, into the anus of the one on all fours, then protruded out the crotch wound, the single spike making a reasonable facsimile of both their missing hard-ons.
They wore their badges, the pins running through their right nipples. Froelich and Wu.
“What the hell are we dealing with?”
I didn’t realize I’d asked the question aloud until Josephs responded. “A fairy. One fucked-up fairy.” His voice sounded distant over the hollow ringing in my ears. “He actually cut their dicks off,” he said to himself as much as anybody. “Heads and dicks both. Beheaded ’em two times.”
My arm twitched with the firsthand memory of the killer, teeth sunk into my flesh, reptilian eyes reflecting back inhumanly.
Maggie moved up for a closer inspection. “How are they staying upright?” She was over the shock, her mind already reasoning, analyzing. She tapped one on the arm with her flashlight, a solid clink sounding back. “They’ve been dipped in something like varnish.”
Deluski rushed out. Nobody tried to stop him.
Josephs snickered. “Punk’s got weak knees.”
I didn’t let Josephs’s words penetrate as my mind struggled to inch forward, wheels slowly turning with the need to make sense of the senseless.
Froelich and Wu had been here before, in this very room. They’d investigated Franz Samusaka’s death and ruled it an accidental OD. They said his missing member was munched away by lizards postmortem. And they got a powerful family like Samusaka’s to accept it.
I couldn’t fathom why Froelich and Wu would cover for this cock-chop bastard. Why sweep away Samusaka’s murder with lies?
Froelich knew Samusaka. They had matching tats. Friends? Lovers?
Nothing made sense. Nothing.
“The killer craves attention,” Maggie said.
“Cocksucker’s got flair,” responded Josephs. “I’ll give him that.”
I nodded my head in silent agreement. The killer reveled in his work. He must’ve been pissed when his killing of Samusaka was passed off as a bullshit OD, his art tossed in the trash as idle scribble.
He wanted attention, wanted everybody to know who he was, what he was capable of. He’d been ignored before, and Froelich and Wu had to pay for showing such disrespect. He’d brought what was left of their corpses back to the site of their crime. And in doing so, he’d retroactively claimed credit for Samusaka. He was erasing all doubt, doing his best to get the attention he deserved. His head-tossing, child-killing, assfuck-posing best.
* * *
We’d returned to the living room, Maggie, Josephs, and I. We’d come to escape the smell, but the stink of my mutilated crew members stayed with me, in my clothes and nostrils.
Josephs shined a light through the window. “You out there?”
Deluski stepped into the beam, hand over his eyes. “Yeah.” His voice didn’t sound right, like he was out of breath. He wiped his cheek on his shoulder.
“You cryin’?” asked Josephs.
Deluski turned his back. The kid had finally cracked, like his newfound freedom had set him free to feel. I wished I could console him. But that shit wasn’t me.
Josephs swung his light on me. “Why are
you and your boy cryin’ all the time? What kind of pussy-ass show you runnin’?”
I let his words pass through me. Not in the mood.
Maggie moved her light around the room. O pipes. Chewed leather shoes. An empty box of rubbers. “The killer must’ve spent significant time here. He’s dropped bodies here twice now. This place is important to him.”
“Maybe he was slumming here.”
“Or he’s a student. There’s a prep school ten minutes downriver.”
“Is that where you went?”
She put her phone to her ear and asked for San Juan Diego Academy. To me, she said, “No. It’s for the troubled kids. Uniforms and curfews.”
“Hey, boss,” called Deluski from the window. “Come check this out.”
I stepped over and leaned through the broken-out frame. I tried to get a good look at the kid, see if he was still crying, but couldn’t see more than a shadow. His light was aimed at a tree. “You see it? Right there on that branch.”
I saw it. An iguana, eyes reflecting like little pools of molten brass. Over the eyes stood row after row of don’t-fuck-with-me spines. The spines ran halfway down his back like a cape of thorns. “What about it?”
“Is that the kind of lizard the killer turned into? See the rust-red stripes on his cheeks.”
“No. Our guy didn’t have spines.”
“Do you remember how many stripes?”
I couldn’t remember. Didn’t want to. Steel teeth clamped down. Flesh ripping, tearing off the bone.
“Well?”
“Quit bugging me with this shit.”
“Don’t you want to know why he shifts into a lizard?”
I shook my head and swung around. Maggie was off the phone, waiting for me. “Franz Samusaka was a student at San Juan Diego Academy. Graduated two years ago.”
I bit my lip, gnawed on the new fact. This place was a hooky haven. A place for troubled kids to get in more trouble. The killer could’ve been Samusaka’s classmate.
Deluski rapped on the wall. “Somebody’s coming.”
I stopped breathing and listened, the distant buzz of an approaching outboard motor sailing through the broken window. Instinctively, I reached for my piece. But I had no piece. Or a hand.
KOP Killer Page 16
