Grave Markings: 20th Anniversary Edition

by Arnzen, Michael A.

  My God, I knew half of these victims!

  “You’re starting to sound like Roy,” he mumbled to himself. “Don’t personalize this any more than you already have.”

  Lockerman leaned back at his desk, and opened his eyes, looking around the station to make sure no one had heard him talking to himself like a schizophrenic. Satisfied, he began to think about his relationships with the victims, wondering if indeed there was a connection somehow.

  He thought about Rodriquez, the one he was least acquainted with. The Killer couldn’t possibly have known that Lockerman had met the man the day before he murdered him. Lockerman recalled their encounter: how he’d walked into the museum and browsed the displays as if on vacation; how Rodriquez had been a kooky fellow, an organization freak in a stereotypical beard like a college professor; how the curator had made him sign the museum register even though he was just there to respond to his call. Lockerman pitied the poor man—he didn’t deserve to be killed so viciously—he was just a silly guy with a brain on his head and a dead end job that made him over-emphasize every minor detail of his work in order to make himself feel like he was doing something important.

  The register.

  Lockerman almost fell out of his chair as he flung himself forward. Could the Killer have been stupid enough to sign his name in the museum register?

  Yes, if he had returned to the scene of the crime, posing as a visitor. Rodriquez would make him do so, just like everybody else. And the Killer would no doubt sign in, just as he had been doing all along on his victims, an ego trip he couldn’t possibly ignore.

  Rodriquez, you son of a bitch…maybe you really were doing something that was important all along.

  Or maybe not. Lockerman pushed himself out of his desk and checked the Evidence Room, looking for the museum register. It was not there; Lockerman cursed the rookies for screwing up once again. He checked the time—it was half past four, time enough to clock out and rush to the museum to check out the register.

  III.

  The museum was quiet as a morgue when Lockerman arrived, and in a way, he felt as if he were visiting the grave of a stranger. When he entered, the new curator—a young college kid who looked like a weightlifter—approached him. “We’re getting ready to close…”

  Lockerman flipped out his badge, avoiding the kid’s eyes. “Springs Police,” he said, charging toward the antique wooden desk where the register lay, splayed open like a rib cage.

  The new curator nodded and crossed his arms, watching.

  Lockerman poured through the pages of the book, flipping back through the phone directory’s worth of names scribbled inside.

  Judy, he thought. All these scribbles look like Judy.

  He lost his place, going too far back in the book. Early signatures looked ancient and faded—he even saw one that was simply marked “X” like something he’d seen done in an old cartoon western. He flipped forward, the crisp, brittle pages crackling like something ancient.

  He found his name, his own sloppy signature from his first visit with Rodriquez. He used this as a starting point for his search for the Killer’s entry—if he signed in at all—because the Killer would have visited sometime after Lockerman’s visit.

  Forty-two names down the following page, he found what he was looking for. The Killer’s unmistakable handwriting, in jagged, sloppy capital letters, read:

  MY MASTERPIECE—THE KING

  The boxed letters were followed by a messy cursive scribble that Lockerman couldn’t quite make out, but he was convinced that it was a signature. The signature of the Tattoo Killer. Lockerman leaned forward, trying to make out the chicken scratch, trying to come up with a name, but it was too damned sloppy. Regardless, this was his first big break on the case: handwriting analysts might be able to decipher the scribbled words, maybe even get him an early psychological profile.

  He slammed the book shut in a plume of dust, the leather cover feeling warm like skin in his palms.

  “Hey,” the body builder curator said, keeping his arms crossed and cocking his head to one side, “what are you doing?”

  Lockerman tucked the book under an arm and marched out of the museum. “Evidence,” he said, and jogged out to his car.

  He decided to head home. Roy had to see this.

  IV.

  Lockerman pulled into his driveway, the leatherbound museum register warm on his lap. Dusk gave his house a mellowed look, covering his unkempt front lawn with unreal auburn shadows. He turned off the ignition of his orange Nova—the car sputtered and spit before dying.

  As he rushed into his front door, jingling his house keys in his pocket, he noticed that Roberts was not at home—the lights were out and his car was missing. He’d wanted to have the newsman go through the book with him, maybe even have a few beers together as they worked on the case like partners. To make good on his vow to him.

  His house was empty, lonely. He flipped on the lights and went into the kitchen, routinely getting a brew out of the refrigerator, taking off his uniform shirt and holster, and kicking off his shoes—the shoes were always the worst part of the uniform, as if they were made to be uncomfortable on purpose, to keep a cop on his toes, so to speak (Lockerman always thought that a good pair of black hi-top basketball shoes for standard issue would work wonders in reducing crime rates). He sighed, fell into a chair at his kitchen table, and cracked open the beer.

  He looked at the museum register, savoring the new possible evidence. Building up hope.

  He reached for the phone—it was within arm’s length from where he sat—and called the hospital, getting a connection to Schoenmacher’s room.

  Roberts answered, his voice lethargic, “Hello?”

  “Roy, it’s John. You won’t believe what I just found, man…”

  Roberts cut him off. “Birdy’s really screwed up, Lock. They just rolled him out of here.”

  Lockerman stopped speaking and looked around the kitchen. “What the hell happened now?”

  “He lost it. Worse than Judy.” He could hear Roberts’ voice crackle. “I’ve never seen anything like it before…”

  “He’ll get over it,” Lockerman said, eager to get back to the subject of the register.

  “I don’t know. You have no idea how terrible it was, how freaked out he was. When I walked into his room this afternoon, the first thing he did was sit up in his bed and start doing his routine. You know, the weather? Acting like he was on the air, pitching forecasts, blubbering some nonsense about thunderstorms down south, pointing with his hands at the tattoos all over his body, talking about a high pressure front here and a low front there. Crazy stuff, man. I don’t know what to think anymore…it really threw me for a loop.”

  “Jesus!”

  “I got the nurses to come take care of him, and when they walked into the room, he kept saying, ‘And now back to you, Judy, and now back to you,’ over and over, backing away from the nurses.”

  “No!” Lockerman couldn’t believe that Schoenmacher—a coolheaded guy with a joke always at the ready—had flipped out. “Maybe it’s just his sense of humor…”

  “I don’t think so, John. He’s gone. Way gone.” Roberts coughed. “You see, the whole time he was shouting that ‘Back to you, Judy’ bullshit, he was playing with himself, masturbating beneath his hospital gown like some friggin’ pervert. It was sick, man. I really wish I hadn’t seen it.”

  “God.” Lockerman swallowed.

  “Yeah, it was real sick. But I think I understand what he was doing. I think he was trying to change the screen. You know, like he could do on the air with the little clicker he held in his hands? I’m sure that was it.”

  “He’ll be all right, won’t he?”

  “Maybe. They injected him with something, and took him downstairs. I’m not sure, but I think they’re gonna give hi
m electroshock. He might be better after that, but he’s never gonna be the same.”

  The line was silent for a while, Roberts sniffling occasionally on the other end.

  “Well, listen,” Lockerman said, breaking the nervous technological silence between them. “I think we’re one step closer to nailing this psycho bastard. On a hunch, I went back to the museum and got the register they have there. The new curator they’ve got there is a real asshole, but he let me take it with me. Anyway, get this: the Killer actually signed in.”

  Roberts remained silent, mulling over what Lockerman had said. “Huh?”

  Then Lockerman explained everything, quickly summing up the events of the day as he got himself another beer: how he’d remembered Rodriquez’ insistence on signing in, how he’d rushed to the museum, and how he found the message. He read the Tattoo Killer’s words slowly to Roberts, describing the way the letters were formed, including the scribble.

  “Geez, what an egomaniac!”

  “Yeah, only a moron would do such a thing. Wish he would have signed his actual name, though, instead of his usual nonsense.”

  “Well you saw the shit he wrote on Judy—he obviously isn’t Shakespeare,” Roberts said. “So, let me make sure I got this straight. It says ‘My Masterpiece’ and ‘The King’, right?”

  “Yeah, all caps. No smaller letters.”

  “No lower cases. No Roman numerals then?”

  “I don’t think so. Maybe in this scribble here, but I doubt it.”

  “What does the scribble look like?”

  Lockerman held the book up close to his eyes. “Uh, I don’t know. Might be his real signature, but I can’t tell. Let’s see. Kill…something. Kill…or…sink. Kill or sink?”

  “That doesn’t make sense.” Roberts hummed. “Kelly? Kelly-something, maybe?”

  “Can’t be. Our killer is male, for sure.”

  “Well ‘kill or sink’ sounds meaningless…“

  “Well that’s what it looks like it says. Maybe you can take a look at it later?”

  “Definitely. I’ll come over after visiting hours are up and they kick me out of this place. I want to wait for Dan to come back. See if they screwed him up or not.”

  “Okay, cool. I’ll see if I can figure out anything else in this dumb message.”

  “Got it. See you then.”

  “See ya later, Roy.” Lockerman hung up the phone.

  Something sharp stung his neck and he slapped it. It was not a bug. He reached for it, groping over his shoulder, and touched a hand, something metallic. He uttered, “What the f…” But the world turned too hazy, too strange to finish as he fell forward, spilling his beer across the thin pages of the register’s fragile, crisp parchment.

  FLASH

  The bulb flashes like an illuminated tit. Instant explosion. White heat, white light, conflagration of pain and pleasure like lovemaking on the surface of the sun….

  The image in his mind is alive, attached, a continuation of an earlier moment, a twin fetus of time looking for its mother…and the three-faced demon leans forward and cuts the umbilicus with the curved black needle-shaped clippers of its teeth….

  Mark is naked, exposed, and Polly is smearing his body with oil paints. He thinks of Mommy, of the little piggies, of pain and knives and electricity. He thinks she should stop.

  But he closes his eyes, and he lets her, he lets her.

  The paints feel cool, slick, wet. Like Mommy, but better. Cool, cold, but warm, too—on the inside. A coat. A coat of paint.

  Protection, love, warmth. Not naked. Not exposed.

  “Inspiration,” Polly says, “is experience.” She massages his shoulders with oils. Runs green paint over Mark’s closed eyelids with her fingers, pulls color into his lashes. Old tears mingle with paint. His eyes sting, glorious—if the pain could sing, it would scream like Mr. Limner’s chalkboard beneath his razor tip.

  The darkness of his closed eyes inspires images beneath Polly’s pressing fingers. Circles and squares of light, of color. Swirling sparks, monsters in the shadows. Like hide-and-seek, he is counting down, he is it. He is finding things, things that no longer can hide, even inside.

  Something soft slips inside his mouth. He tastes chemicals, linseed. He reaches out with his tongue, prods the mass. Softness, surrounding a hard dot of flesh. A nipple. And on that stiff, dartlike tip of flesh, something like paper, held in place by paint.

  “Take,” Polly says. “Swallow.”

  He licks the paper free, gulps it down.

  Polly almost moans. She pulls away. “Not that.”

  Mark opens his eyes—the light seems brighter now, more intense. Polly arches her back, smears paint down Mark’s chest, trailing mazes of lines with her fingertips. Tickling. Brushing.

  He looks at Polly’s body, unashamed now. Olive greens, brick reds, spread around her breasts. Her body dances, writhes, her body like so many slick balloons—animal twistees of psychedelic color, shiny in the light.

  He feels a tingling in his hair, in the back of his head. Like paint drying, only more ticklish. Dizziness. The shadows throbbing around Polly as she dances as if flopping on a mattress of black, floating, impossibly vertical on an ocean of undulating shades.

  Mark blinks and the light moves in slow motion. White—black. No in-between. No grays.

  Polly rocks on her hips, speaking to him: “True art must be simple. So simple it becomes complex. Do you understand?”

  “Yes,” Mark says, his tongue rubber, tasting like a pencil’s pink eraser.

  Polly digs into the shadows, returns with a tall roll of tan canvas. She drops it to the floor and kicks it. The roll spins, unravels, spreads out like a royal carpet.

  Polly sits on it, lies down. She spreads her body across the carpet while Mark watches. Imprinting the canvas with her painted body, creating accidental pictures. Butterflies, angels—handprints like those Mark left on the blackboard. Only Polly’s are geometric, angular, unnatural. Unreal.

  She stands, slouching in the shadows. Paints drip from her textured, patterned body. Diamond shapes from the canvas congeal, bead.

  Mark knows he has been drugged—that Polly has given him a gift, like the cool boys at school sometimes take to act silly. Only he does not like it. He is not himself.

  Polly giggles, looks down at the stained canvas. “See, that’s me. A self-portrait. Very nice, I think.”

  “I don’t like it,” Mark says.

  “Come on,” Polly says, cutting her latest painting free from the roll of canvas with a sharp jackknife. “Now you try.”

  “No,” he says simply, strongly. He grips the arms of the chair tightly, like a king grappling his throne.

  Polly giggles, waving the canvas in the air to help dry it out. The edges curl. “Don’t you want to do a self-portrait like mine?”

  Mark’s mind unravels, like the woman he drew on his desk. He feels suddenly connected, complete—centered like the sun. “No.” Slowly, he stands. The room throbs with his pulse. The room is bright now…he can see, see everything. Geometric shapes dance in his eyes. “My art is not yours. You bring the outside in, like a sponge. You are just a reflection of the world around you, a victim like so many others.”

  Polly frowns as he approaches.

  “But my art comes from the inside out. Like electricity from a generator. Like light from the sun. I create. I am not created, like you.” His voice is matter of fact, his face calm. He knows that now, for the first time, he is in control. Of it all; of everything.

  Polly takes a step back, her mouth open. “Wow…you know much more than I ever thought. I’m sorry.” She reaches for her blouse. Mark can see the blood rising to her skin, the pink tinge behind the paint that covers her flesh. She is suddenly embarrassed.

  Mark blinks, whi
te-black. He reaches for Polly, caressing her arm. “I can’t explain it. I can’t tell you exactly what I mean,” he says. “Let me show you.”

  Polly looks up at him, drops her blouse. “Okay,” she mutters. She opens her eyes widely, and waits.

  Mark rubs her body, smearing the remainder of paint till it merges, melds, almost black. She watches as he digs his fingernails into her stomach, scratching a thick red wound above her navel. Polly winces in pain, but watches; she does not close her eyes, she does not make a sound.

  The wound welts up, a line of thin red blood. “Do you see?” Mark asks, moving his hands to her back, standing behind her now.

  “I think so. I like it, Mark, I really do.” She can feel his body against her back, the hard pulsing warmth pressed against her thigh. An arm reaches around and digs into her breast, drawing another line.

  “Yes,” Polly moans. “Now I understand.”

  Mark closes his eyes tightly as he clutches her, drinking in the darkness, the shapes that present themselves to him. He breaks a hand free and reaches behind himself, grabbing hold of a handful of painted brushes. Pulling them free from their canvas, the colored feathers glued to the ends tickle the inside of his palm.

  Blindly, he brings them down into Polly’s back, their dart-shaped, paint-hardened tips plunging into her flesh, deep between the ribs. Her body stiffens, soundlessly. She squirms in his arms. He does it again. Lower. She slips to the floor. Tumbles on the canvas.

  Mark opens his eyes, proud of his creation. He smears the rippling red over the gooey oils, thinning them out. Everything is black. He stands, returns to his throne, and waits for the color to dry, watching it bake in the bright light that streams from his eyes.