Murderland

by Garrett Cook

  Cass looks at me like I’m an idiot, which is perfectly alright, because I feel like one. I’m a little embarrassed that she seems to be getting somewhere fast. My IQ is about one hundred points higher than hers, so I find it quite curious that she’s so much faster on the uptake than me in regards to this. But then, IQ doesn’t account for those benefits attained from fixation, reading and naturally keen observations. It sounds like I came up with a pretty solid diagnosis, but on the other hand, she’s looking at me like I’m an idiot, so it probably isn’t that keen. Not to mention it was pulled out of my ass, and I can’t see any connection between all these things.

  “That’s very clean pop psychology. Too clean. The pathologies of killing are seldom that clean. You ought to read Ian’s column every once in awhile. You’d know that kills aren’t that direct a manifestation of a killer’s obsession. Look at Kris Kringle, the first Psychopomp you ever shot.”

  “What about him?”

  “He didn’t take girls apart and send their organs home because he was obsessed with the “gift” of life and its workings, like some of the police analysts said. It was more than that. It looked like he was obsessed with discovering the inner workings of women and returning them to the source, but that’s not what it was. In his files, it said that when he was a child, he was a compulsive voyeur and a compulsive tattle tale.”

  I’m beginning to see where her example is going. I feel like a fool too for having just dismissed the guy as a deconstructionist. He was more complicated than that. He fancied himself as something of a moral avenger too.

  “He felt that what was inside people was dirty,” I begin, putting the pieces together on Kringle, “and he sent the parts back to their mothers and fathers. He believed their sins were reflected by the dirtiness of what was inside them, the messiness.”

  Cass nods. “Exactly. He was still tattling, relieving them of their dirty little secrets. Things that are perfectly normal to anybody but a schizophrenic obsessed with digging up dirt. If “the Tanner” were obsessed with signs of identity, he wouldn’t grab something as sensible as their identification. He’d grab their clothes. And he wouldn’t leave their skins hanging in a closet, as if he planned on putting them on later. If he did, he’d put them in his own closet. The police have probably thought about his collecting and classified him as a collector, which would be further evidenced by their attaining the I.Ds, which he squirreled away as a traditional collector would. But why hide something you want from others instead of keeping it for yourself, unless you planned on retrieving it eventually.”

  “So you think he’ll go back for the I.Ds?”

  Cass shakes her head. “If he needed them, he would have taken them home by the time you got there, unless he needed them some place secret to get at them again much later.”

  I see where she’s coming from. There has to be some practical use for them. He couldn’t have them at his personal residence or anywhere particularly conspicuous, so he hid them at the crime scene. He had to make sure that if the I.Ds were found, they would not be found on him. He had no problem hanging the skins in a closet, but the wallet he hid in a pile of garbage. This isn’t the work of a collector. This is as fishy as I thought it had been.

  “The I.D.s have nothing directly to do with the murder.”

  “Exactly.”

  “So, are they a red herring for the police, or something he’ll need to leave hidden, retaining the location but not the possession of?”

  “Red herring?” Cass laughs. She always find stiff or antiquated turns of phrase funny.

  “Can you answer the question please?”

  “It’s both. I think your first step today is to inquire about that Nathaniel kid and all the others. Your second step is to find out where Bobby Greer got the fake ID, and why, if he was escaping with a fake ID, the killer got him with his real one on him. It means that whoever gave him the fake ID was going to meet him later or else that whoever made the fake ID killed him.”

  She glows when she says it. She’s a bad as I am when it comes to getting hung up on the excitement of the murder. I should have known somebody who followed Reap for this long would know about this kind of thing more than somebody who was exposed to it only by osmosis and reading a couple of Godless Jack’s books. She gets out her laptop and begins searching the internet. The girl’s a regular Nancy Drew, over a decade older and a whole lot more voluptuous, but still a regular Nancy Drew. I know not to ask any questions until she’s ready to answer them. When she is, she’ll gush. She’ll be radiant and excited and she’ll look like she’s doing what God put her on the earth to do, so I should just back and enjoy her starting to do it.

  Lo and behold, she’s luminescent. “The credit search doesn’t tell me anything new, but it does give me an idea. Every one of those kids has a perfectly expendable career. Every one of those kids did a couple of small time straight to DVD reenactments and a couple of TV jobs. It’s possible that they were all lured to their death by a job offer, something really lucrative. And with Bobby Greer’s need to get out of town and start a new life, it was probably irresistible to him.”

  “But my question is, what about the other eight?”

  “I don’t know,” she says, “that part’s what gets me. Why kill seven actors and eight strangers?”

  “Collectors tend to be more discriminating than that.”

  “To say the least.”

  We put on Duck Soup and lay together in bed. The antics of the Marx brothers are a refreshing repose from all of the violence and darkness that erupts whenever the TV is turned on. I don’t need news, I don’t need debates over the actions of Mr.400, I need peace, a rest from nightmares and counterterrorism and young homosexuals being flayed alive. It’s such a relief seeing just black and white with no streaks of red. No words are exchanged between us until she goes to work, when there’s a sweet goodbye with a kiss on the lips. She leaves at seven thirty and I set my alarm for nine. I sleep peacefully until it goes off, with no trace of nightmares.

  Next morning, I’m at the mall at ten, and it’s no more pleasant than it usually is for me. I swear they’ve just gotten gaudier and dumber and noisier since I was a kid. The arcade is twice as cramped and dark as the one at the mall in Connecticut, and the stores selling designer shoes and pop culture memorabilia are twice as dominant. I try to blink as often as possible to avoid noticing all the wispy little Dark One scouts that fly through the air here. In spite of having parked at the mall entrance closest to the food court, the Orange Julius still feels like it’s at the end of the world. I feel more at home in the desolate, foul smelling warehouse than I do in this place.

  An overweight young man that looks about my age, and seems about one angry customer away from hanging himself is at the counter. He doesn’t even bother asking what it is I want, since it’s an extra couple seconds of not doing a job that he clearly doesn’t want to do. Like the sad Rastafarian, he makes me initiate everything. It makes instantly ill-disposed towards him, about ready to shake any answers I can get out of him physically. Only thing is, I’m not actually a detective or a cop or anybody who could get away with doing so.

  “Does Nathaniel Gilman work here?”

  “I hope you’re a cop,” says the suicidal Julius boy.

  “No. I found his driver’s license, I went to his apartment and he wasn’t there and then I found out that he worked here. I figured maybe he’d be…”

  “He quit on Friday. Made a very big production of it. Now I have to pick up his shift.”

  “He quit on Friday?” As they say, the plot thickens.

  “You deaf? Yes, he QUIT on FRIDAY. I was hoping you were a cop, because he told me not to tell the cops I saw him on Friday. I was hoping you’d take him in.”

  “No such luck,” I reply and leave the suicidal Julius boy to Nathaniel Gilman’s shift. So he too got this job offer that Cass theorized about, so he too was taken away by a stranger with candy that took his ID and his skin. Suddenly, something hi
ts me. I return to the Orange Julius with the driver’s license.

  “What is it?” asks the suicidal Julius boy who is quite tired of all this talk of Gilman by now.

  “I know he doesn’t work here anymore, but if you see him anywhere, can you give him this?” I ask, handing the Julius boy the license.

  He looks at me with a whole new annoyance on his face.

  “This isn’t Nate.”

  “But, it says…” I feign surprise.

  “The name and address are right, but the face is wrong. This isn’t him. This is another photo.”

  I jump for joy internally. “I don’t know what this ID was doing on the ground then.”

  The Julius boy shrugs and I get to leave the mall. It feels like an immense privilege, a burst of freedom. Then, when I get out to the parking lot my day gets worse again. Fate has once more forced me to cross paths with this same idiot Ripkid who is walking out of the movie theater where Oliver Stone’s Godless Jack biopic is showing. In the crowd of Reapkids walking out, he stands out for some reason. He looks at me and smiles, springing his swordcane. He’s not alone either. The gang looks kludged together, but not altogether harmless. The curvaceous girl in the Bettie Page wig and chainmail bikini covered in bloodstains looks like she would be a threat if she knew how to use that broadsword. Doubt it. Price tag’s still on there. Short skinny kid in suspenders, leather pants and a surgical mask? Possibly dangerous. Can’t take him seriously. I don’t even know what his fucking costume’s supposed to be. Gein kid in a butcher coat and Leatherface mask? There’s my problem. He’s got four inches and about fifty pounds on me. Probably moving toward his trunk to grab a chainsaw. It seems almost like some of the other Reapkids are gathering to join the fight, but they choose instead to stand a good twenty feet away observing and whispering among themselves. A Manson collects bets from two Gacys and a Son of Sam. Damn. Distracted.

  “Well, well? What ‘ave we ‘ere?” the Ripkid advances, getting between me and the big kid. Fuck. I knock him to the ground with one leg sweep, but it still takes too much time. The big kid’s opened his trunk. I prepare to jump him, but the kid in the incongruous costume jumps on my back and starts to choke me. It doesn’t take a ton of effort to literally shake him off, but it takes long enough for the big kid to rev his chainsaw and the Bathory girl in the Red Sonja getup to come in for a very wild swing. Her friend’s lucky to be on the ground with the Ripkid leader. She could hurt someone with that thing. But it won’t be me.

  I duck. The kid on the ground grabs my legs and holds them tight, so I’ve only got my hands and my head to work with. Can’t stop you. Not gonna stop you. I have no idea why I’m punching a guy who’s coming at me with a chainsaw in the gut, but I get him good. Knocks him back a bit. They can’t stop you you’re fucking lightning from god you don’t have to do this relax not now not now damn you not fucking now relax and it’s nice sitting on this little boat fishing the Sun is warm and the fish are biting life is easy. Summertime and the livin’ is easy…

  The Mr.400 shirt and shades appear.

  “You’re not on a little boat,” they tell me.

  “I’m not?”

  “No. You’re engaged in a brawl with a Reap gang in a mall parking lot. You’re going to kill them and some obnoxious but innocent bystanders if you don’t return.”

  “I should go back there, then. Thanks, Mr.400.”

  “You’re Mr.400, Jeremy. I’m not going to take that away from you. Clothes don’t make the man that much.”

  I’m on my way back. Relax you don’t have to do this. Stay calm. Enjoy the sun and catch some fish you ungrateful little shit. This is my job not yours, coward. They can’t stop you you’re fucking lightning from god. You don’t need to be there. Open eyes mountain top open eyes again Leatherface is on the ground. I am holding the chainsaw now. I am standing on the wannabe Bathory girl’s hand and pressing it up to her neck. I am not doing this. I am being yanked away. Wants to drop me into a little boat on an ocean of tranquility. Wants me to stand on the mountain and look down. Won’t do it. That sanctimonious shithead is not me. Ungrateful little shit you don’t have to do this. Mr. 400 says I don’t. Says I am me and can make my own decisions. You’re a good man, Jeremy, who does the right thing to the right people. Not sure I consider them people, but I stop the chainsaw and run to my car. The crowd claps as I leave the scene. Thank you, thank you, I am Mr.- don’t do it. Right, thanks. The whole gang is out cold save the broadsword girl who just gazes at me admiringly. I don’t want to get a good look at the beating I gave them, that’s for sure. There is some blood on my knuckles.

  I get home, high on adrenaline and a bit less scared of myself than I was yesterday.

  “How was the mall,” she asks, “you stop by the Hot Topic and get a new Ripper cape?”

  I smile pretty genuinely. “No, but I’d like to go to Murderland for dinner.”

  “Damn” she laughs, “just when I’ve gotten over my Reap phase.”

  Maybe it’s a risk letting her be seen with me and keeping too high a profile at Murderland, but I don’t care, I have a hunch to follow up. It all needs just one more piece and it’s at that reapjoint unfortunately. We dress normally and sit down without a word, ordering dinner almost under our breath. But I don’t need to. Not there. I feel a burst of pride when I see that that fucking Ripkid must be spending the night at home licking his wounds.

  I approach the booth and Joey waves “hi”. “You find what you needed, man?” he asks.

  “Not quite yet.”

  Joey gets up and joins us at the booth. He recognizes Cass almost instantly. “I’ve seen you here,” he says nonchalantly, “with Ian Sterling one time, and Selene.”

  “Yeah, they’re friends of mine.”

  “You an amateur detective too?”

  “Every once in awhile.”

  The waitress, the familiar Manson girl, brings Joey an Albert Fish filet.

  “I got another question for you.”

  “Yeah, I figured,” he replies, “you don’t seem too into the Reap thing.”

  “I’m not. I need to know who you get a fake ID from around here.”

  Joey laughs. “If I knew, I’d be drinking in an alley somewhere, and I’d be dancing the night away at Le Couteau. Then again, I don’t look particularly old so I couldn’t benefit from one. You’re shit out of luck there; I don’t know where Bobby got his.”

  The waitress shakes her head and laughs. She sizes Cass and I up. “For friends of Ian Sterling, you guys are real out of touch. There’s only one person to go to in this town for a really good fake ID. But you didn’t hear it from me, okay?”

  I nod. I need this information so much; I can almost smell the killer’s blood on the edge of my razors. She hesitates before she says it and during the second of silence, life slows to an utter crawl, going into slow motion. Then she says it, and I could kick myself. Cass looks like she’s been standing at the Grand Canyon, but needed it pointed out by the tour guide. It’s embarrassing.

  “The only person you can get a perfect fake ID from in this town is Walter Hausmann.”

  Legion

  Why is it exactly that I told Jeremy to wait on killing Hausmann? I don’t like the guy, I think he’s perfectly capable of doing something this reprehensible, and all proof seems to indicate that he killed these people who had been trying to disappear, so why is it that I told Jeremy to wait on it? Maybe it’s because Hausmann’ s too good a suspect, or maybe somebody’s trying to frame him, or maybe this whole thing won’t make more sense with Walter Hausmann dead. In fact, once Hausmann’s no longer out there, this becomes even more of a puzzle.

  If Hausmann did even get these seven male prostitutes and eight other people to trust him enough to be in positions where he could kill and skin them, then that implies that Walter Hausmann managed to kill fifteen people in an evening and transplant their bodies to the warehouse. It’s obvious that nobody without automatic weapons or poison gas can kill fifteen people in
a night. It’s uncertain whether they’d been poisoned or not because there’s nothing but skin. If the skins were taken, then anything could have been done to them internally and the cops wouldn’t know. Of course this killer isn’t a legitimate collector; there was another motive and a reason for the skins being so important.

  I’m looking over some documents at work, so I’m a bit distracted. I should be a bit distracted from the documents by my amateur detective work, but instead the documents, my actual work are distracting me from my amateur detective work. Makes me kinda mad at Jeremy for getting me into this. I wish these were documents like the documents in all those detective movies that wrap up really neatly with the case, but they’re not. These are divorce papers for some creep who was just fired from his teaching position. He didn’t end up going to prison as a sex offender, but the sex certainly offended his wife, seeing as it was with a seventeen year old male student. Almost eighteen at least. Pictures too. Wife probably hired a private detective.

  Says the detective got a picture of the guy soliciting sex from a male prostitute. Maybe things do connect like this. Maybe being a detective is in fact like being in a detective novel. Wonders never cease. All of a sudden things really connect. One of the figures in the photo looks familiar, and it’s not the one I expected either. Jeremy was right about this. Evidence only complicates things further.

  When I look at the photo, I expect to recognize the gigolo, but I don’t. I find the John to be more familiar. The guy was almost thirty, but he had a real baby face. The kind of face that could be attached to a 21 year old actor without anybody knowing. A face that has, in fact been attached to one of the I.Ds. The I.Ds don’t make sense as evidence because they don’t function as evidence, they don’t make sense because they don’t belong to the people on them. With just a battered and scarred skin, nobody could tell this guy wasn’t somebody much younger. And if the I.Ds on the scene were found, that’s what the cops would think. But the cops missed the I.Ds, Jeremy found them. That’s a strike against whoever planned this out.