Grave Markings: 20th Anniversary Edition

by Arnzen, Michael A.

  Roberts smiled, honestly happy for his friend. It was good to see Schoenmacher excited—maybe he wouldn’t be so insecure anymore, after he and Judy went out. “Well that’s not good news…that’s great news!”

  “Yeah, and I’ve got you to thank for it!” Schoenmacher cracked open a soda and handed one gratis to Roberts. “What a cool idea you had: charming her with womanly things like cooking and talking and shit. She’s a sucker for it, I can tell.”

  Roberts hesitated. Is that what I told him to do? Con her with bullshit?

  “We’ll see,” Roberts said awkwardly. He took a slurp from the cold aluminum can in his hand. “Wanna see my surprise?”

  Sure, what is it?” He cocked his head sideways to whisper, “You got a condom for me?”

  “Nope, what I got is all mine. And that goes for any condoms I have, too.” Roberts slipped off the shiny fabric of his jacket, unraveled his new silk tie, and slowly began plunking open the buttons of his shirt.

  Schoenmacher leaned away, clearly confused as Roberts slung his collar to one side. The weatherman popped his knuckles. “So, what is it? Are you moonlighting at Chippendales, or what?”

  Roberts puffed the air out of his lungs, chuckling. “No, no. Look at my back, would ya?”

  He peered around Roy’s shoulder. “No way!” Schoenmacher’s voice echoed off the walls. “Is that what I think it is?”

  Robert nodded and grinned.

  “It isn’t one of those fake ones, is it? An iron on or whatever they are?” Roy felt Schoenmacher’s hand lightly tapping the inked skin on the lower part of his scapula. “Geez, that’s good work. No way is that a fake one. I’m jealous.” Roberts squirmed a little as the cold fingers probed his back. “Where did you get this, Roy? And when? I had no idea you were gonna get a tattoo…why didn’t you tell me? I’d have gone with you.”

  “I didn’t know I was gonna get one. I just went on a whim. And now I’m glad I did it.”

  “Geez, you lucked out finding an artist who could make a goddamned typewriter look so good. Man, look at the detail! You’re very lucky you went to the right shop. There are some guys out there who don’t know what they’re doing.”

  Roberts thought about the Tattoo Killer. Schoenmacher didn’t know how right he was. “I went to a place downtown. Guy’s name is Corky. He’s a great guy.”

  Schoenmacher sat down next to Roberts on a plastic chair that creaked beneath his weight. Roberts began buttoning his shirt back up.

  The weatherman drew his head from side to side, smiling in a way that actually looked authentic. “I’ll be damned. Roy’s a man now. Got himself a tattoo.”

  Roberts windsored his tie.

  “We gotta celebrate!” They made plans to get together for another one of their customary barbecues on the next Saturday. Schoenmacher said he was buying this time, to show Roberts how much he appreciated the advice about Judy and to congratulate his friend on having the guts to get a real tattoo. “Ya know, in the Army when a cherry got a new tattoo, they’d have a breaking-in ceremony. All the guys would get the new guy drunk, and then march past him in a line, each one punching him as hard as they could on the tattoo. We could do that, if you wanted.”

  “No thanks, tough guy.”

  “What’s the matter? Don’t think you could handle the pain?”

  “No,” Roberts replied, feeling somehow superior to Schoenmacher. “Just wouldn’t want to see you and John hurt yourselves.”

  “Geez,” Schoenmacher said, rolling his eyes. He habitually cracked his knuckles. “You offer to pop a guy’s cherry, and what do you get for it?”

  Roberts faked a laugh as they left the break room. He wondered how badly Schoenmacher must have been beaten when he got his own self-made Birdy tattoo, years ago.

  IV.

  Lockerman drove his orange Chevy Nova into his weedy gravel driveway, the tires crunching sharp pebbles beneath the car like dead beetles.

  He had mixed reactions to the whole incident at the museum. The Tattoo Killer had not only victimized another innocent person (someone—anyone—they did not as yet have a body) but he also proved himself to be one crazy bastard (only a true psychotic would think such horrible artwork belonged in a damned museum). And the more insane the criminal is, the harder he is to track down, because he doesn’t follow any rules and works alone. On the other hand, Lockerman was glad—almost ecstatic—that the Killer had committed the crime. It meant that he was still in town, still trackable, not on the lam. And that he had left more clues for Lockerman to follow. That meant Lockerman was one step closer to administering his personal justice. It was a painful step to take—treading on the corpse of yet another victim—but it was an important step, nevertheless.

  Lockerman turned off the ignition and exited his car, carrying a manila envelope tucked under his arm. His black shoes crinkled as he stepped across the brown stems of grass that had become his front lawn—a midget wheat field of dry, split ends—like stepping on the crew cut of a giant.

  “Hey, John!” It was Roberts, half jogging over from his own doorstep to meet him. Lockerman noticed that Roy had cut his own kelly green lawn. It almost looked like a new house had been erected next door overnight.

  “What’s up?”

  “Not much, my man. Just got some bad news. Our Tattoo Killer is back in business.” Lockerman unlocked his front door. “C’mon in, and I’ll show ya what happened today.” They entered his living room. More laundry had piled up since last time. And the place—or was it Lockerman himself?—stank. Like old, rotten fish. Roberts knew immediately that his friend was wearing a dirty uniform; he couldn’t possibly have done otherwise.

  They sat down. “So whatcha got for me, John?” Roberts hinted at the manila envelope. “A gift? A birthday present, perhaps? My birthday isn’t for months. You shouldn’t have, you really shouldn’t have…”

  “Happy Birthday, Roy.” He handed over the envelope, his lips nowhere near cracking a smile. Roberts blushed, feeling stupid for trying to cheer Lockerman up with his corny behavior.

  Roberts withdrew a photgraph of the framed tattooed skin from the museum. The grotesque kinglike creature stared at him with its hollow, dark sockets. That piercing look in the eyes vaguely reminded him of the O’s in Corky’s sign.

  “Jesus! Where the hell did you get this? What happened?”

  “The sicko broke into the City Museum downtown and put the fucker right up on the wall, next to the other paintings. This guy’s crazy, thinks he’s some grand master artist or something. Just read the title he put on it.”

  Roberts scanned the photo, a thought coming to mind. “Hey, wait a minute. This isn’t what I think it is, is it?”

  “Yup,” Lockerman replied. “Real skin. I’d hate to see the victim of this one.” He jingled his keys again, unbuttoning the top of his uniform. “Wanna beer?”

  Roberts nodded, feeling nauseous. For some reason, seeing the Tattoo Killer’s work on a flap of skin was even more horrifying than on the entire body of a corpse. It was more vicious, more cold-blooded than the earlier killings, because it somehow made the victim even more of an object than before, using the flesh as a canvas for his twisted creations. “Ya know,” Roberts said, looking up at Lockerman and shaking the photo. “This could mean that the Killer isn’t doing it just for revenge. The tattoo isn’t specific to the victim, right?”

  “Well, we don’t know, because we haven’t found the victim yet.”

  “Yeah, but this is different than the others. Kuhlman was a mechanic, right? So turning him into a machine makes sense. Tina was a prostitute, and all that sexual stuff the Killer put on her fits, in its own sick way. But this…” Roberts waved the photo like a flag. “This isn’t on anybody, so it follows that he’s choosing people randomly.”

  “Makes sense. He’s obviously a psycho.”

&
nbsp; Roberts finally looked down at the title and signature in archaic letters. “’Meet your maker.’ This is probably how he sees himself. This is like a self-portrait; he thinks he’s some sort of king, the ‘ruler of flesh and ivory’ or whatever…. What else could it mean?”

  “Looks satanic to me.” Lockerman gulped down beer.

  “Could be…” Roberts stared at the letters, realizing that this was the first time he’d seen the artist’s signature. “Man, you were right. This guy’s writing is sloppy, like a third grader’s.” He looked at the letters, feeling his editor-self kicking in gear. The titles weren’t grammatically correct; the letters themselves obeyed no rules of capitalization, with caps and lower cases used indiscriminately. Roberts chuckled. “This almost looks like one of those funky ransom notes you see in the movies, where they cut differently shaped letters randomly from a newspaper so no one will be able to pin the kidnapper’s handwriting.”

  Beer sprayed the air as Lockerman choked. “Maybe that’s what it is…a note!”

  “You think he’s got someone kidnapped, and he used their skin for a ransom note? Come on…”

  “Well, maybe it isn’t that scenario in particular, but those titles he uses are pretty fishy. Maybe there’s some sort of message hidden in them. Let me see that photo.”

  Roberts handed him the picture, happy to have it out of his hands. It had been almost like holding a real piece of skin, cold and smooth to the touch.

  Lockerman scanned the picture, a bit too anxious to find something, Roberts thought. He looked like a hyperactive child doing one of those “What’s wrong with this picture?” puzzles in a kiddie magazine.

  He moved next to Roberts so they could both examine the photo. “Look…the letters that are small here.”

  “The lower case ones?”

  “Right.”

  “What about them?”

  “The ‘M’s’ are small. The ‘K’ is small, too. Then the ‘I’ and ‘V’ of ivory.”

  “Hmm…try reading it without those letters.”

  “Eet your a-er, ruler of flesh and ory? Nah, that doesn’t make sense, does it?”

  “Not unless he’s a cannibal or something. And he didn’t eat Kuhlman or Gonzales. Did he?”

  Lockerman flashed Roberts a nauseated look, shaking his head from side to side as if saying “No, you sick bastard.”

  “But wait…” Lockerman brought the photo closer to his eyes. “Look, the, uh, lower case letters or whatever spell M-M-K-I-V. That doesn’t make sense, but they’re almost the same letters he uses for the signature.”

  Roberts pointed at the initials. “He uses a hyphen before the M-K-I. Could be a subtraction sign, or something like that. Try taking those letters out.”

  “M-V?”

  “Hey, maybe those are his initials?”

  “Do you think he’s that smart? Or stupid?”

  “Hell, I don’t know. You’re supposed to be the expert criminologist, not me.”

  “I don’t know, it all seems too convoluted to me. He couldn’t be doing that on purpose.”

  “What about the other titles? Were they done the same way?”

  “I’m not sure. Hold on.” Lockerman went to his bedroom, and came back with glossy photographs of Kuhlman and Tina. Roberts couldn’t help but wonder what they were doing in his bedroom. He knew that something funny was going on with Lockerman and that photo of Tina, but…Nah, can’t be, Roberts thought, ashamed of his own speculations. Get that sick thought out of your head right now.

  Lockerman slid Kuhlman’s photo on top. It was a close-up of the miniscule title, taken by the coroner. The flesh was torn as if engraved, hairs had been uprooted by the needle’s path: mACHINE OF mANkiND, it read in hurried print. “Yeah, I think we’re on to something. Both ‘M’s’ and the ‘K-I’ are in little letters. But if you subtract the M-K-I here, you’re just left over with the letter ‘M.’”

  “Hmm…what about the other one?” Roberts felt a twinge of guilt; he really didn’t want to look at Tina’s naked body again. Lockerman hurriedly slipped it above Kuhlman’s skin shot, and it made him feel dirty, even though this shot was a different one, another close-up of the Killer’s signature and title: MOmmY BiRDS AND kiLLER BEES.

  “Same thing,” Lockerman said. “Two ‘M’s,’ one ‘K,’ and…” Lockerman focused, squinting his eyes. “This time there are two ‘I’s.’”

  Two ‘I’s’. Roberts almost heard an audible click in his brain, and he saw the clue clearly now. “Roman numerals.”

  “Huh?”

  “Roman numerals!” Roberts counted with his fingers. “Kuhlman was the first victim, and there was only one ‘I.’ Tina was victim number two, and there were two ‘I’s’ on her. Roman numeral one, and Roman numeral two.”

  Lockerman twisted his head sideways to face Roberts. “My God! You’re right!”

  “Well, maybe not. What was the one in the museum?” He grabbed the stack of pictures from Lockerman’s long hands and riffled quickly to the framed king. “M-M-K-I-V.”

  Roberts frowned. “I-V…Roman numeral four? There’s no number three.”

  “Shit,” Lockerman said, his smile fading. “I bet there is. Only we haven’t found the body yet.”

  “You think?”

  “Yup. The guy’s gone serial. Hell, I already knew that. But, geez. Numbering his victims?”

  Roberts suddenly wished he hadn’t figured it out.

  “Well, maybe we’re jumping the gun,” Lockerman continued, grimacing. Those ‘M’s’ and ‘K’s’ in the signature kinda screw up our theory. But if you’re right, then that means that I’ve got two missing bodies to track down now.”

  FLASH

  Mark is happy. He is alone in his bedroom, reading the comics he stole out of Dad’s fat Sunday newspaper. He’s excited; normally he’d have to sneak out in the middle of the night to read the comics, long after Dad had gone to sleep. But Dad hasn’t been reading the paper for weeks. He hasn’t even come out of the garage for weeks. Mark thinks that Mommy makes him stay out there, but he isn’t sure. He doesn’t care. As long as he can read Prince Valiant, he’s happy.

  Mommy is sleeping. She always sleeps late, especially on weekends. She hasn’t talked to him for as long as he hasn’t seen Dad. It’s like they’re playing hide-and-seek with him, and he is it. Only they get to do the counting before he gets to look for them. It isn’t fair. They haven’t finished counting yet.

  Mark thinks he looks like Prince Valiant. Only better. He holds the colored newsprint next to his face, and compares himself to the young prince in his bedroom mirror. Mark smiles, knowing he could be in the picture and do things better than Prince Valiant. The prince is a wimp. But Mark still likes him, because he has a big sword, and everybody likes him. He will be the next king.

  “I see you!”

  Mark drops the comics, and sees his dad standing in the mirror behind him. As if he were hiding behind the paper all along. But he doesn’t look like Dad. His beard is big and greasy. His eyes are red. His hair is a mess. He looks like Pig Pen from the Snoopy cartoons. And he stinks, too. He smells like Mommy.

  “I see you,” he sings with a high voice. It doesn’t sound like Dad, either. But Mark knows it’s him.

  Mark is scared. “I’m sorry, Dad. I didn’t mean to read your paper.” He tries to keep his eyes looking at Dad’s face, but it’s hard. He’s scary-looking. He’s ugly.

  Dad smiles, baring yellow teeth and a mouth full of spit. They are still looking at each other in the mirror, and Mark isn’t sure if it’s all really happening…maybe it is happening inside the mirror, in another world.

  Dad whistles, not using the words: “I see you.”

  “Dad?” He tries to smile, to make Dad stop. He doesn’t. His grin gets wider. Mark thinks he looks like the pum
pkin Mommy carved last Halloween, the one she cut too much, and had to throw away. She had cut a toothy smile so big around the thing that the pumpkin flattened on itself, as if eating its own face. Mark remembers how she threw it into the trash can and it just flattened, pfft, just like that. And that smile never went away. Neither will Dad’s.

  “I see you, I saw you. I see-saw you.” Daddy wiggles his eyebrows, and dry white flakes fall down from his face, like snow.

  “What, Dad? What?” He wants to turn, run, get away from Daddy. But his eyes are locked on him. He knows that if he looks away…

  It doesn’t matter this time.

  Daddy slowly brings his hands to Mark’s shoulders, lightly, tickling the skin they touch like the legs of spiders, daddy-longlegs spiders, and the hands slowly inch their way towards his throat. “I saw you. I saw you. I saw you.” The three-syllable song goes on and on, sometimes whistling, sometimes humming, as Dad’s hairy fingers tighten around his neck.

  And the song goes around and around, Dad’s voice getting deeper and deeper, slower and slower as the world in the mirror turns white and hazy, but the song never completely, totally goes away.

  When he opens his eyes, he wonders what he’s doing, sitting in Dad’s garage, when suddenly it all comes back to him. Dad hurt me again, he HURT me. His father is working on something next to the corkboard of tools, with his big, wide back turned to face Mark. And he’s gonna hurt me again, if I don’t get out of here….

  Mark double-checks to make sure that Dad isn’t looking, and then stands up, not standing up, but making a noise as he sits back down again. Lots of noise.

  He is strapped into the chair. Thick leather belts are wrapped tightly around his wrists and ankles, their edges cutting into his skin.

  Dad doesn’t turn around. “I saw you,” he says, matter-of-factly.