Michael Lister - Soldier 03 - The Big Hello

by Michael Lister

  From the outside, it appeared to be an old three-story Victorian, but inside it was both bohemian and radical.

  Clip and I moved methodically through the creaky hardwood-floored house searching every possible space De Grasse could be hiding in, the works on the walls around us disturbing and disquieting, combining distorted images, odd perspectives, eerie elements, asymmetrical arrangements.

  Human bodies, mostly women, deconstructed, disassembled, rearranged. Elongated humans with the heads of animals. Female torsos cut open with manger scenes and city skylines inside them. Men with erect penises and boat oars for legs. Heads coming out of navels. Shapes. Impressions. More semblance of things than actual depictions of the things themselves.

  I recalled Adrian Fromerson leading me through here the first time, remembered some of what he had said … “See how the work involves elements of surprise, non sequiturs, and unusual and unexpected juxtapositions? What you’re seeing is liberation. A truth beyond the real, a kind of sur-real truth that transcends the obvious and actual.”

  I had been so close to him. How many lives could I have saved if I had known he was actually Flaxon De Grasse? Would Lauren be back with me now? Would Ruth Ann still be alive?

  We continued to the second floor, passing Henry Folsom’s blood on the staircase. The paintings and sculptures there were far better than those on the first, their juxtapositions more startling, their disjointedness and disorientation more disconcerting, more sexual and colorful and radical.

  But nothing compared with the third floor where De Grasse had placed his own work, including, eventually, displaying one of his victims. It was a single room known as Black and White Butchery and looked nearly identical to the crime scene photos of De Grasse’s female victims.

  All black, including the floor. Faceless female mannequins painted white were posed on black silk drop cloths in various stages of disassemble and dissection, the poses identical to those De Grasse had used in arranging and displaying his victims.

  “Be a fuckin’ service to humanity to put this motherfucker down,” Clip said.

  I nodded. “Somethin’ I should’ve already done.”

  “You hear they’s bastards like this,” he said, “but you don’t believe it. Not really.”

  I thought again about what was done to Ruth Ann, how I had been made to watch, how the inhumanity and butchery didn’t seem real even after witnessing it with my own eyes.

  After completing our search of the entire house, which meant having to walk through Henry Folsom’s blood twice, it was evident Flaxon De Grasse was long gone.

  “What now?” Clip asked.

  “The dock house,” I said.

  Flaxon De Grasse was supposed to have lived at the end of a dock in a small shack on St. Andrew’s Bay. When we had investigated it earlier we found a rickety dock, the gaps in its planks like missing teeth in a demented smile, leaning pilings and empty slips, the entire structure appearing abandoned and soon to be at the bottom of the bay. There was no sign that De Grasse had ever lived there, and though there was a workshop with the tools necessary for what he was doing to the women he killed, there was no evidence he ever had used them or that location to do so.

  “Thought that place’s just a decoy?” Clip said.

  “Doesn’t mean he wouldn’t use it to hide in now,” I said.

  “True,” he said.

  I killed the lights of the old Victorian and opened the front door.

  When we walked out Butch was standing there with a couple of uniform cops waiting on us.

  Chapter 28

  “Well well,” Butch said. “Would you lookie here?”

  “Butch,” I said.

  “Jesus, Jimmy, you don’t look so good,” he said. “I mean even worse than usual.”

  He was an overweight older man with a dark complexion, stubble, some scar tissue around his eyes, and a nose that had been broken more than once.

  “You two are under arrest,” he said.

  I shook my head––even though it hurt to do so.

  Butch was a bully and a bad cop. He had moved up from Miami or down from Chicago––I had heard both––a couple of months ago and partnered with my old partner on the force, Pete Mitchell. He was slow and mean and had been trying to put the pinch on me since the moment we met.

  “Breaking and entering. Disturbing a crime scene.”

  “Not gonna let you arrest us tonight,” I said.

  “What?” he asked in genuine shock. “Ain’t gonna let me? You ain’t got a choice in the matter, pal.”

  “Captain Folsom sent us here,” I said.

  “Nice try pal, but Folsom’s in the hospital.”

  “Which is where I saw him,” I said. “Call him if you like. Or if you don’t want to disturb him, and I wouldn’t, I was you, then call Iris. I saw her too. She’s in the waiting room.”

  He shook his head. “What’re you playin’ at, peeper?”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “You take chances, dontcha?” he said. “One day you’re gonna push it too far and I’m gonna bury you.”

  “Remember the woods, Butch?” Clip said.

  Butch had taken me to the woods to torture and interrogate me––maybe even kill me. Clip and I got the jump on him and could have easily given him early retirement, something I was inclined to do when I thought he might have had something to do with what happened to Pete Mitchell and to Lauren. To his surprise we had let him go after he had convinced me he had nothing to do with either disappearance or death.

  “You could be rotting in an unmarked grave right now,” Clip continued. “We’re the good guys.”

  Butch looked at me. “No nigger’s gonna talk to me like that, understand? Final warning. And just ’cause you ain’t got the rocks to kill a cop, don’t mean you a good guy.”

  “Look, Butch, we think De Grasse has Lauren Lewis,” I said. “All we care about is finding her. That’s it. Hassle us all you want after that.”

  “Thought the Lewis dame was dead,” he said.

  “We’re going now,” I said.

  “Where you think you’re goin’?”

  “I just told you. To find De Grasse.”

  “Entire department’s lookin’ for him, but a one-armed dick and a one-eyed nigger’s gonna find him?”

  We started walking away when another uniform ran up from the car.

  “Sergeant. Sergeant,” he yelled. “We got another. There’s another.”

  “Another what?” Butch asked.

  “Another body. Like the others. The surrealist sex killer has struck again.”

  My heart stopped beating and my knees buckled. As my legs began to give, Clip grabbed my arm and helped me stay up.

  “Where?” I said. “Where is she?”

  “Not far from here,” he said. “A little shack at the end of an old dock on the bay.”

  ***

  Clip drove.

  We got there before Butch.

  One of my old friends from the force let us through.

  We ran down the dock, trying to avoid the missing planks, but not being too careful. It was too dark to see well enough anyway.

  Like before, all the windows and doors were open. Unlike before, there was movement inside. A few cops moving around nervously.

  The cold breeze was damp and dank and smelled of rotting fish and something else––death. Beneath the dock, desultorily, the unseen waters of the bay slapped, tapped, and punched the pilings.

  The leaning structure consisted of two rooms.

  The living area was just as before––smallish wood room, wind coming through the boards, a cot, a small kitchen table with one chair, an old, scarred wardrobe, a rocking chair, and stacks of papers and books. Framed paintings leaned against the walls, none of it hung, all of it De Grasse’s work, trash and wine bottles littering the floor.

  Apart from the body and the blood, the workshop was much the same––dirty and disorganized, littered with trash and bottles, old and well-
worn tools, chains and hooks dangling from the ceiling, clinking together in the wind, and protruding from the walls, all holding the dismembered parts of white mannequins.

  And now the actual body parts of his latest victim.

  The wet copper smell of blood, the foul, slightly sweet-tinged stench of bisected bowel, the acrid ammonia aroma of urine––the olfactory equivalent of death.

  This was nothing like before. Before he had made art of bloodless bodies, arranging their cleaned and pristine parts into surreal displays. This was rushed. This was ugly. This wasn’t creative or artistic. This was a big bloody mess. Why? I knew why he was rushed, but why do it at all while on the run, while being pursued relentlessly? What’s he up to?

  Clip rushed in before me.

  “Hey. Hey. What’re you doing?” a cop yelled.

  “Just need to see her face. Her face. Where is it?”

  “Who the hell are you?” one cop said, while another said, “Over there,” and nodded toward a hook in the corner that held her head.

  We both turned and looked.

  Unable to stop myself, my momentum had carried me into the room right behind Clip. I was close enough to see the horror with my own eyes.

  “Jimmy?” one of the other cops said.

  The disembodied head was tear-streaked and blood-covered, its skin pale and waxy, but I could tell instantly it wasn’t Lauren.

  “Get them the fuck outta here,” Butch barked as he rushed in behind us.

  A couple of cops started toward us, but we held up our hands and walked out on our own without protest.

  ***

  Walking back down the long dock, attempting to avoid the missing planks, I was weak-kneed and punch-drunk, completely and utterly spent, but relieved and strangely relaxed, as if my body no longer had the strength or capacity for even the slightest tension.

  “Why take the time to do that?” Clip said.

  I turned and looked back at the leaning shack––now crime scene––and the cops swarming around it.

  Clip added, “Just can’t help himself? Can’t stop? Even when he tryin’ to get away.”

  I shook my head. “He’s driven all right and he enjoyed that and good,” I said. “But look.”

  He turned and looked back down the dock with me, as more cops passed by us on their way to the shack.

  “Hell,” I said, “practically every cop on duty is down there.”

  “Diversion,” Clip said.

  I nodded.

  “But the roadblocks still up,” he said. “This ain’t gonna change that.”

  I started to say something and then it hit me. “Look,” I said, directing his attention to the right, to the marina a mile or so away and all the boats moored there.

  “Not usin’ a road,” Clip said. “Son of a bitch.”

  Chapter 29

  We jumped in the car and raced around toward the marina, hopeful and suddenly energized.

  “We don’t find him at this one,” Clip said, “he might be at another––public or private.”

  I nodded. “He uses this one,” I said, “he escapes sooner and spends far less time on the road––possibly being spotted or hittin’ a roadblock.”

  He nodded.

  We were quiet a moment.

  I was driving. There was no traffic on the road and with all the cops at the crime scene, I drove just as fast as I wanted, as I could.

  “You gonna tell me what that was about?” Clip asked.

  “What what was about?”

  “The ‘would I still find Lauren and take care of her and not square anything that might happen to you’ what,” he said.

  “Just what it was,” I said. “Just making sure.”

  “Could be wrong,” he said, “but I’s pretty sure this the first thing you lied to me about.”

  “I’ll explain after we find her,” I said.

  “And if you gets killed ’fore we do?”

  “Then you’ll know what I meant.”

  “What I figured,” he said, nodding to himself.

  We reached the marina, parked, and began looking around.

  We checked each slip, each boat, working our way quickly but carefully down the first row.

  At the end, partially hidden by a bait and tackle shack on one side and a covered slip on the other, was a parked patrol car.

  “We involve him?” Clip asked.

  “Don’t see as we have any choice,” I said.

  He nodded and we walked over to the car, making sure not to look like crazed surrealist sex killers as we did.

  When we got close and the cop didn’t flash his lights or open the door to get out, I figured he was walking around, patrolling the place on foot.

  When we got closer I found out what he was really doing.

  The beat cop, a big bald man named Kieser, was slumped in the seat, head forward, throat slit, shirt blood-soaked, lap a crimson puddle.

  “He’s here,” I said. “Let’s split up and find him.”

  Clip nodded.

  “Two rows left,” I said. “You take the next one. I’ll get the one after that.”

  Guns drawn, we split up and began going slip by slip, boat by boat, down the two remaining rows.

  It took a little while, but I completed the search of my row, continually checking the bay for boats in case he had already shoved off as I did.

  There was no sign of him. Maybe he’d left long before we got here. Maybe this was another decoy. Maybe Kieser getting his throat cut had nothing to do with De Grasse. Maybe I’d never find Lauren. Maybe I’d be dead soon anyway.

  I looked around but found no sign of Clip, so decided to walk back over to his row and help him finish the search.

  It didn’t take long to find him.

  He was in a boat in the third slip up from the bottom.

  He was standing there staring at me.

  It took me a minute to make out Flaxon De Grasse behind him, gun to his head, using him for a shield.

  “Riley,” he said when he saw me. “Should’ve known.”

  Clip looked at me and frowned. “Sorry,” he said. “He got the jump on me ’fore I knowed what was happenin’. Fuckin’ up a lot tonight.”

  I shook my head and waved off his apology.

  De Grasse was immaculately dressed dandy. His bleach-blond hair was short and looked electrified. His skin was pasty, but only showed on his face and hands. Every other inch of him was covered in a blood-splattered black European suit, white shirt, and tie. He stood at just under five feet, which meant that Clip, not a large man himself, completely covered him until he moved.

  I continued edging closer until I was at the edge of the dock, nearly able to reach out and touch the boat.

  “Where’s Lauren?” I asked.

  The fine features of his small, pale face fractured into an enormous smile and expression of pure delight as he let out a little gleeful squeal.

  “Oh,” he said. “This is too good. You think I have her.”

  The boat rocked back and forth gently, rhythmically, Clip and De Grasse mirroring its movements, which reflected those of the bay.

  “I don’t have her,” Flaxon was saying. “Oh, I wanted her. I really did. The art I could’ve made out of her already artful perfection … But no. Alas, what will happen to her is far, far worse than anything I could do to you or her. With what I do the suffering is over so quickly. The art lasts, but the suffering doesn’t. Oh, she is so going to suffer––and so are you now. I can’t believe no one told you. Guess Harry was going to but you killed him before he could.”

  Looking at this little man made me wonder again how such a small and odd-looking boy-man could have done the things he had done, could be such a brutal butcherer of beauty and innocence.

  “Are you ready?” he asked. “Don’t you want me to tell you? Isn’t the suspense killing you? You better sit down.”

  “Tell me where she is and we’ll let you live,” I said.

  He laughed in genuine amusement.
<
br />   “I’ll tell you where she is before I kill you and the nigger,” he said. “She’s in hell. A lasting torment and torture concocted for her by a truly wicked man.

  “She’s been nursed back to health––well, as healthy as she can get––then treated like the whore she is. Drugged, but not so much that she doesn’t know what’s going on, bound, gagged, she is tied to a bed in a whore house, being used and abused and defiled and re-diseased by every fat, ugly fucker who pays to put his limp prick in one of her whore holes. Think about it. Right now your precious Lauren is being fucked by a stranger. Some hairy, sweaty––”

  He stopped mid-sentence as a flap of his bleach-blond hair and scalp blew off and brain and blood started running down his face and neck and he collapsed onto the deck of the boat, dead where he lay.

  Clip grabbed his own ear and jumped forward.

  I turned toward the sound of the shot to see Coleman Burke standing down the dock a short distance, his gun already holstered again.

  “What the hell are you doing?” I yelled.

  “Only thing I ever do,” he said. “What I was paid to.”

  Chapter 30

  “Burke the reason you sayin’ all that shit earlier?” Clip asked.

  We were back in the car driving down Beck Avenue.

  I didn’t respond.

  “De Grasse not the only one he hired to take out, is he?”

  I still didn’t say anything.

  “Speak up,” he said. “I’m still havin’ a hard time hearing. Head’s all fucked up from almost getting blowed off and gettin’ some crazy fucker’s blood and brain splattered on it.”

  Beck was empty.

  We were driving down it looking for a payphone. I was going to call to check in with Collins because I didn’t know what else to do.

  “Why didn’t he take us out too?” Clip asked. “Been easy to do. Three shots instead of one. You, me, and that blond bastard?”

  “He gave me a day head start,” I said.