Sins of the Flash

by David Niall Wilson

  That interview had made him as famous as any of the weirdo killers could have hoped to be and had put him in a position he'd never wanted and certainly hadn't encouraged. His face had been plastered over the front page of The San Valencez Chronicle with the headline, "Psychos 'R' Us Cop Vows to Keep Our City Safe."

  Swell. He'd thought that then, he thought that now. Fucking psychos got nicknames, now he had one of his own. Just what he needed. To top that off, every time he got a case just a little out of the ordinary, like this one, he was the center of attention again. He'd hit two reporters already, and pulled his gun on a third. One more and even his reputation wouldn't be able to save his career.

  The problems with the press were pretty much in his past. It had been at least two years since he'd lost his temper in public, and there had been ample opportunity. One of the reasons was the man at his side. Big Mac could, and would, intimidate a reporter into silence just as easily as he could coach a witness through his statement. He was a rock, an immovable object that helped to anchor Tommy against the insanity. Tommy thought maybe the big guy upstairs had finally decided it was time to give the Doyle boys a break – something to help even the odds.

  Big Mac didn't have Tommy's intuitive ability as a detective, nor was he as colorful. What he was was a necessity, and Tommy found himself thanking whatever God would allow a fucked up world like this one to exist for putting him in the same car.

  They were nearly back to the station before either man spoke. Tommy heaved a sigh, releasing a ball of tension that had knotted in his stomach at first sight of the body in the suitcase, and leaned back in his seat. "Here we go again, Mac. You ready for this one?"

  "Nope," Mac said, a slow grin sliding across his face, "but what does that matter? You're thinking psycho, then?"

  Tommy nodded. Mac wouldn't question him, not anymore. It was almost eerie the way Tommy could detect insanity in a situation, and in any case, this one was a no-brainer.

  Still, psychos attracted Tommy like a magnet, pulling him into vortex after vortex of violence and danger. Mac had seen it enough times to know the danger in ignoring his partner's odd "sixth sense."

  In this case, the evidence of the two young bodies and the condition they'd been in spoke pretty eloquently for itself. Nobody in their right mind could've done it.

  "I'll go by the lab and get the reports later," Mac said quietly. "I'll get everything I can from that new kid, Cotter. He's young, but damned if the kid can't pull a fingerprint off a grape-skin if you need it. We were lucky to get him."

  "Ken Straker recommended him," Tommy nodded, parking the car and getting out slowly, stretching. It was going to be a long day. "I know he helped out some on that graveyard thing a couple years back. He said we needed him more here. Over there their psychos are fewer and farther between."

  "Maybe we ought to move there," Mac said, his smile slipping a bit. "Might be a nice change."

  Tommy tried to smile. "Might be at that, Mac, might be real nice. They'd probably just follow us, though, and Ken's got enough trouble. Let's try and put this one to bed quick."

  They went into the station house without further words, both preparing themselves as well as they could for what was to come, and both knowing in their own way that any preparation was futile. They were stepping into the void, hoping like hell that there wouldn't be sharpened stakes – or worse – waiting when they hit bottom.

  Tommy went directly to the office they shared with two other detectives and started a pot of coffee bubbling in the decrepit, half-melted Mr. Coffee by his desk. He sat back and lost himself in his mental inventory of the crime scene as the liquid hissed and sputtered through the filter, dripping slowly into the charred glass pot beneath it. Coffee and scotch were the two things he drank to excess. At work it was coffee, and after, it was scotch to forget about work.

  He knew very little about this one so far. He was going to need more on the prints, a cause of death, something. All he had now was two dead bodies, both young, the boy dressed for the street and the girl naked, wrapped only in an old blanket. Both victims were tied with nylon rope, and duct tape had been used to cover their mouths. Red, industrial strength duct tape. Damn.

  Tommy's mind drifted back through time, back to pictures his father had shown him, pictures of another young woman who'd died. The photos had been of his cousin, Jeanine. They’d accompanied a letter from Tommy’s cousin, Patrick, a letter that his father had kept hidden from him for many years. That moment, the moment he'd been handed those pictures and been baptized in the name of the motherfuckers, the insanity, and the holy-Christ school of law enforcement, was branded into his brain, permanently imbedded in his conscious and subconscious thoughts.

  Patrick had found his sister tied and mutilated, raped and then stabbed to death in her own apartment. He'd tracked the killer, and he'd arrived only in time to see the psycho commit Hara-kiri on himself, robbing Patrick of any sort of vengeance. The pressure had nearly been too much, and so Patrick had written this letter, sending it to the one relative living who might understand, Sam Doyle, Tommy's father.

  He remembered his father that day, his expressions, the slow, low tones of his voice. Tommy had seen emotion in the old man's eyes so seldom that his father's expression had taken him by surprise. Tommy had taken a seat, as directed, and he'd taken the pictures without a question. It was the day before he was to leave for the academy, the day before he would become a cop.

  They were bloody pictures, violent and senseless. Jeanine had been a beautiful girl, long haired, slender. She was naked in the pictures, spread-eagled and ravished on the floor. Her own floor, her own apartment. His family. It hit home like no other message could have.

  He had looked at the pictures for a long time, turning them over and over in his hands. Then he’d just stared at his hands and watched them tremble. When he'd looked up, his father was watching him.

  "I wanted you to know why,” the man had said, taking the pictures back and tucking them back into their envelope. "I wanted you to know that, no matter how hard you try, how many of them you put away, there are more. They are everywhere, Tommy, sick, sick men. Don't you ever let your guard down."

  Tommy had listened then, and he remembered now. His mind was strobing the quick glimpse of the young woman's face he'd gotten that morning and the stark terror of his cousin's face, tied and cooling on her living room floor. It had been true then, it was truer now; some things never changed.

  He was startled back to the presence by the sound of the door opening. Mac slipped in quietly, dropped a stack of papers in front of Tommy and turned to pour them both a cup of the now finished coffee.

  "You been through any of this yet?" Tommy asked, indicating the pile of paper.

  "Just a quick glance. Look at the cause of death, Tommy. You were right again."

  His stomach sinking to new levels of queasiness, Tommy flipped the folder open and scanned the first few lines. He stopped on the words "lethal injection, Hydroquinone, diethanolamine, sulfur dioxide, sodium bisulfate." Beside this was a scribbled note, "Photographic developing fluid."

  Fuck. Now he was faced with a much different set of circumstances. There was more to this than a simple killing, more than household violence. Now the insanity was leaking out from under the edges. Tommy read on.

  The girl had been made up carefully, according to the report. Although it had been smeared as she was thrown into the freezer, or on the journey to the junk yard, it had obviously been applied by a professional. Also, she had been alive until she was in the freezer.

  Collected dust on her feet and bottom of the blanket indicated that she had walked to her final resting place and the lump on the back of her head showed where she had been slammed down into it. Her left arm had broken from the impact.

  "Christ, Mac," Tommy muttered, still skimming the report, "if it hadn't been for the boy in that suitcase, we might never have found her. Seems our psycho might be smarter than I originally thought, just wasn't prepar
ed to deal with the boy. Maybe he's small."

  "You mean he couldn't lift the body?" Mac asked, obviously impressed. "Sounds reasonable. I mean, he didn't even carry the girl. Maybe he killed the boy first because he was scared of him?"

  Tommy went back to his reading. It was all conjecture at that point, and they both knew it. There was nothing that would really help except in giving them that mental picture, that "edge" they needed to track the guy down.

  There wasn't much else. Both of the bodies had shown traces of alcohol, Scotch, to be exact, and a strong barbiturate. There was no way of telling if the killer was behind that, or if they'd just taken it on their own. The way the boy was dressed seemed to indicate that the two were no strangers to the street.

  "No positive ID on either one, so far, but we have a couple coming down later to view the girl's body, maybe the parents. They called in worried when she didn't show up this morning."

  "Good. Maybe we can get something from them on the boy, too, if it's their daughter. Christ only knows we need something more than we've got. What do you make of this developing fluid shit, Mac?"

  Mac considered the question carefully before answering. Mac considered everything carefully. "Don't know for sure, Tommy, but I'm thinking not that many folks would have it lying around their house."

  "That's what I was thinking. You don't suppose she was posing for pictures, do you?"

  "It's possible. I viewed the bodies a few minutes ago when they brought them in. She was a looker, on her way to beautiful, for sure. Would have made a hell of a model, I suppose."

  "Well, if that's what she wanted to be, maybe her parents would know something about it. We'll have to question them, if they ID her. Go let the folks in the morgue know, okay?"

  "Yeah, no problem." Mac slipped back out the door, and Tommy returned to the folder in front of him. Sixteen. They had both been approximately sixteen fucking years old. Sixteen years would be their eternity, now. More statistics, more points for the psychos. Damn.

  He rose, walked to the window and sipped the acidic coffee slowly. It drained down through his throat to add to the churning mass of tension that was fast returning to claim his guts.

  It was fogging up outside, a storm sliding in from the bay, and he watched quietly as the first drops of rain splattered across the window, spreading out and blending, one with the other, like the lives in the city, overlapping and drawing into the maelstrom. Shit. It was going to be one long day.

  * * *

  The parents arrived on schedule, and after identifying the body, Mac brought them up to one of the interrogation rooms. He gave them coffee and a bit of silence as they dealt with their shock, then he got down to business.

  "Mrs. Andrews,” he said softly, “I am very sorry for your loss, but I’m going to have to ask you to try to calm down."

  Mac was doing his best to soothe the woman, but his best was falling short. Tommy watched as patiently as possible from the far end of the room, sipping another in an endless stream of cups of coffee and wondering what was going through the woman's mind.

  They had a positive ID on the girl, and a probable on the boy.

  Belinda Andrews, Lindy to her friends, had been out on a date with her boyfriend, Tony Rogers, a boy her parents had never trusted and had certainly not approved of. They had been sneaking off together to "who knows where" for about a year now. No, the Andrews' didn't know if she'd wanted to be a model.

  "All either of them ever seemed interested in was music, drinking whatever they could get their hands on, and sex," Mr. Andrews informed them through a mask of white-faced shock. "I always thought, you know, that they'd grow out of it, that he couldn't be that bad, if Lindy liked him."

  "Mr. Andrews," Mac had informed him quietly, "the boy didn't kill your daughter. He is dead too. We need to know anything, everything you can tell us about where they might have been, what they might have been doing."

  It was hopeless. The parents had not been in control of their daughter for a long time, nor had they had a clue how to regain control. They didn't know where she had been, what she'd been doing, or even what colors her hair might have been that night. All they knew was that, after all their years of trying to raise a child, they had failed. They’d lost the ultimate battle.

  Tommy had an idea of what was ahead for them, what they were about to face. They might make it, depending on how strongly their relationship was molded, but they might not. It was going to be devastating.

  Each would blame the other, then themselves, then the other again in an endless circle of guilt and anger. Each would call him, over and over, wondering why he had done nothing to get the fucker that had killed their little girl. It was always the same, and, as usual he had little or nothing to go on. Swell. Tommy had his own bodies to bury; why did the city keep sticking him with more?

  As Mac continued to try and question the Andrews, Tommy jotted notes in the small notebook he always carried. He would have to begin with what he had, the chemical that was the cause of death, and the photo angle. There had to be suppliers of such material, and there were more than enough photo studios and modeling agencies in the area to keep his men busy for a long, long time. Maybe the kids had friends, enemies, maybe someone sold them dope and Mac could run them down on the street.

  He heaved another sigh of resignation. This was the worst, the waiting. He knew they didn't have enough to find this guy without a huge portion of luck, and he also knew, somehow, that it was not over. There would be more to come, and they would probably be worse, and there was nothing he could do but to wait and to clean up the mess when the psycho was done, trying to dig something further from the debris.

  How many this time, he wondered. Two? Four? Ten? It was too much to think about all at once, and to dwell on it was another road to insanity. All he could do was dive into his work head first, do what he could, and wait. Fucking swell.

  Moments later Mac ushered the Andrews out with a solicitous, sympathetic smile and the promise that they would indeed do their best to bring the guy in who did this to their daughter.

  Tommy admired his partner’s calm. Tommy’s guts were rolling over and over like a pit of snakes, driving their fangs deep into his intestines each time they switched positions.

  He couldn't tell someone what he didn't know, and he didn't know when, or if they'd get the guy. He didn't even know if the guy would kill again, though he felt in his gut that he would.

  There would be no sleep that night, so there was nothing more for it. It was time to get to work.

  SIX

  The darkroom glowed red. The hazy light reflected off the slick surfaces of the photographs and gave the droplets of developer that slid from their surfaces and back into the vat below the appearance of fresh blood. That's what Christian thought as he watched them, waiting, patiently anticipating the arrival of his masterpiece.

  He was in no hurry. He knew that art took time and patience. He'd waited years, an entire lifetime, for this moment. He watched, and he waited, savoring every drop of the experience and every second of memory.

  He remembered the drops of real blood that had slid over Lindy’s lips after he'd pulled free the tape. He'd wanted to taste it, to lick it from their surface, but he hadn't.

  He also remembered how those lips had trembled with fear that he himself had brought to them, with surrender to his genius, his will. Somewhere in his past, possibly from his mother, possibly in school, Christian had heard the term "blood red lips". Now he understood.

  He remembered other things about her as well; things that made his skin tingle and his nerves feel as though they were on fire. Forbidden things that crashed around inside his head and confused his senses.

  He caught himself drifting off into memories of her flesh and the perfume of her hair. They were strange memories. He felt the stain of his past wrapped up in them. He remembered the very different, very possessive feel of his mother’s flesh; it had been softer, heavier, and looser. He still smelled Lindy's perfume
, as well as the heavier scent his mother had favored.

  He thought of his hands, sliding over the girl's breasts, his fingertips just brushing the tips of her nipples. She had reacted, whether out of fear, or some warped lust, he didn't know, but his touch had brought that reaction.

  With his mother, the reactions had all been his, right up until the end. She'd gotten her satisfaction, but never without her control. Now he'd experienced that control himself, and it was distracting him from the work at hand, from what was truly important.

  He returned his gaze to the photos hanging before him and concentrated. They were exquisite. He had had time to capture each nuance; each curve was highlighted to perfection. The colors would be perfect as well, he knew. He was, after all, a master of his art. Even the portraits of slovenly children and mindless families had been close to perfection – these would be better.

  His eyelids flickered in fatigue and his mind blurred the events of the past day and the visions of his past, fantasies and nightmares that his own mind conjured into one surreal whole, but still he waited. He would not surrender to sleep without viewing his creations, would not give in to the needs of his body until the needs of his soul had been filled. He was an artist; suffering was natural.

  Finally he was satisfied that he had waited long enough, that the photos were ready. They would still have to dry completely before he could remove them from the wires that suspended them, but they were whole creations now, masterpieces. He scurried over to the light switch on the wall and flipped it from the red position to the center, then up.

  The bright, fluorescent light that flooded the small room nearly blinded him. He rubbed his reddened eyes with the back of one hand, being careful not to get any chemical residue in them. He wanted his sight fully functional for this moment of triumph.

  Christian swept his gaze over the photos, beginning at the left and moving from image to image, taking in every color, every slight variance of hue or shadow, every glistening highlight. They were magnificent. He slid back to the left and followed the line a second time, remembering each pose, re-capturing each moment in his mind.