“Thanks for your time,” she said.
Alexis sauntered over to the old man, who had managed to get to within spitting distance of the police tape. He was regarding the outer reaches of his world like a fish in an aquarium. The cops must have figured it wasn’t worth the time escorting him out, so long as he wasn’t anywhere close to the victims.
“Can I talk to you?” she asked.
The old man stopped, leaned on his cane, and stared at the pavement. It was the best he could do. His arched spine was so deformed, he really could only look down for anything other than brief periods. “Anything about the savage beating that went down here stand out to you?”
For a while, it didn’t seem like he was going to answer. Just keep shaking until he fell apart under the constant earthquakes. She’d probably learn more from reading the spill of bones on the ground, like tossed runes, considering all he could see was the pavement beneath him. She had to remind herself that, with older people, it took more time for things to get from the back of the brain to the front.
She pulled out a box of raisins from one of her pockets and nibbled on them, for the same reason she smoked the cigarettes, to slow her pace down to accommodate her interogatee. It was a tossup which vice was going to get her in trouble first: the smoke, inviting cancer; or the raisins inviting diabetes. The whole idea was to use them both to offset either destiny.
“Can’t hear much, see even less. But some things did get through my filters.”
She thought about the “get through my filters” bit, like it was a particularly cheeky way to refer to his infirmities, too self-conscious, too theatrical, like someone more concerned about sounding colorful than about his infirmities. And so she ran this one through her filters, to see if he might be yet another of the culprits hiding in plain sight. But once again, the theory didn’t track. Both the killers were quite tall. Even factoring in how bent over he was, a ton of theatrical make up, it just didn’t play.
“They enjoyed their banter more than they enjoyed kicking ass,” the old man stammered, working his vocal cords like bellows that needed oiling.
“You’re saying their rapport was everything?”
“I am.” The old man used both hands to hold himself up on the cane, or as high as his vertically-challenged body could manage. Alexis thought about it. Brothers? They looked an awful lot alike from a distance. Lovers? Or just two friends that never knew love apart from one another? In love with love for love’s sake, celebrating its impossibility in the face of the horror-mania they kept around themselves. Maybe they had had horrific childhoods that denied them love, and now that they had found it, they were reenacting the horrors to make sure not even that could deprive them of love again. Ordinarily, she’d stop herself from reading in this much, but if she was right, they were merely acting in a textbook manner, their psych profiles more commonplace than both would like to let on.
And that meant a break for her in the case.
“Thanks, old man.”
Alexis checked her cell phone’s in-box as she strolled towards the ambulance, only now loading up with the two victims. Still more videos were coming in from: cell phones collected up at the crime scene, and the pedestrian traffic cameras. The techies were still amalgamating the lot back at the precinct, getting ready to run analytics software on the whole shebang that would make her feel less than useless in a couple hours, and have her wondering why they bothered to pay her instead of the other way around. The search-algorithms had a habit of resoundingly trouncing her detective’s acumen.
On a lark, she played one of the videos. Noticed the glitch where the clown was standing on the corner one second, the next—the clown was gone. And another almost imperceptible gap where the old man wasn’t there, and then he was. Magic. Editing magic. She checked another video from another cell phone. Same thing. And another. Same thing. She looked up for the clown and the old man and they were gone. She had been played. They were laughing at her, and soon the entire precinct would be, as well. But how?
If her suspicions proved correct, all the cameras would show the same glitches, from the mounted ones hosted by the city’s taxpayers dotting the streets, to the cell phones in everyone’s hands. Some kind of magnetic pulse? Like a low-grade EMP, just enough to glitch out the devices for a few seconds, without messing with the electronics too terribly? She was no techie. She supposed that meant there were probably a hundred ways it could be done by someone who was, possibly using technology that wasn’t even ahead of its time, just first to market, courtesy of the first joker to think of it.
She was standing back at the spot where she interviewed the clown earlier. She bent down and picked up two stretch-bands. To hold his feet against the back of his legs so he could stand on his knees, she realized, thus cutting his height and making his legs look out of proportion with his torso, and his head bigger than it should be. Knee pads for the knees, clown shoes and clown pants for the rest of the illusion, and discipline, of course, physical prowess, the kind of athleticism needed for circus performances.
At least the information the clown fed her wasn’t meant to throw her off the scent, only to cue her. Did they secretly want to get caught, per the stereotypical bad-guy psych profile, or just to up the game in search of bigger challenges? Something told her it was the latter, and these two were a long way from tiring of the game. Quite the opposite, they were just getting started, as they themselves had inferred with the master teaching the apprentice. “The banter was everything.” If it was, the teacher wasn’t looking to retire or to step down, only to have a companion to share the good times.
Alexis retraced the old man’s steps to where he had been standing for his interview. She picked up the fallen pieces of his costume discarded the way a snake sheds its skin, in dry clumps. Overdone costume in every way. The clues suggested he must have been the apprentice. The master saw no reason to hide his face beyond some face paint, confident he could distort his musculature to disguise himself from her prying eyes.
Did the psycho partners find it disturbing how easy it was to outdo even most professional actors? Thus cuing them as to their own sociopathy? The apprentice had arched his back beyond the pronounced hump the fake hump alluded to, and walked with his long neck arched down to erase another few inches of height, making it hard to judge his actual size. That had to have been painful. Might explain all his shaking, and his keeping his face to the ground to hide the pain he couldn’t hide from her, making that particular arthritic infirmity serve him well.
Nice of them to land her a career-making case.
Maybe the boys had profiled her. Or at least the master had. Maybe they had done their homework to know whose beat this was and who would show up first to lay claim to the crime scene. Maybe they knew that dull, ordinary people like her were drawn to the peacock personalities; they just couldn’t help themselves.
Maybe they were just as up to speed on her tendency to latch on to certain cases like a pit bull and never let go, not ever. Maybe this was the beginning of a long courtship.
The question was, could she keep upping her game to chase them all over the world, without sacrificing what she loved most about her life, the quiet simplicity and normalcy of it, the lack of exceptionalness? Could she make herself into a Sherlock Holmes chasing after her Moriartys while still continuing to live the ordinary life in the ordinary way? Or would genius bleed into everything else until it had erased the normalcy she cherished above all else in a world gone mad? That normalcy was her oasis in the desert of all that meaningless color, that reminder that all that glitters is not gold.
Well, whatever the temptations, she just wouldn’t do that to herself. She loved herself too much to let these two sociopaths, or any bad guys, get that far under her skin.
***
“That was a hell of a lot of fun,” Piper said, clamping down on the reins. He still wasn’t quite sure how tightly he was supposed to hold on. He kept looking all directions, convinced someone had to be follow
ing them.
“What do you think of our exit strategy?” Cliff asked.
“I look rather dashing in a policeman’s uniform. And I’ve never ridden a horse before. That’s two for two.” He adjusted his position in the saddle, thinking maybe he was slouching too much in an effort to lead the horse by bending forward. “I do question putting ourselves squarely before the cameras like this so soon.” His eyes locked on to the ones perched on the stoplights just ahead of them.
“The facial recognition algorithms are probably set pretty low for police officers.” Cliff saluted the boys back at the precinct. “Smile for the cameras, Piper.”
Piper waved as they passed through the green stoplight. “I can’t wait to tell Iona about our adventures today.”
“I’m thinking it’s time we cut her loose.” Cliff made minor adjustments on his horse to keep it in line a lot better than Piper was managing.
“Iona? No way. She keeps things fast and furious.”
“She’s going to have to make out on her own for a time, in any case. We’re scheduled to do the barroom butcher next.”
Piper clamped down on the reins. “The guy in Berkeley, who gunned down fourteen people, no wait, fifteen, including the bartender? I’d all but forgotten about him.”
“A necessary part of your training. He’s an ex-SEAL and marksman. You could use the weapons experience.”
Piper sighed. “Fine. Getting some distance on one another is healthy for any relationship. She’ll be all the more eager to see us when we get back.”
“If you say so. I was thinking more along the lines of a woman spurned.” Cliff chuckled.
Piper thought about it. “Either way is fine. Angry sex can be stimulating. And if she takes it a step further and sets a trap for us, ensuring we spend the rest of our lives behind bars, even better.”
“Glad to see we still agree on some things.”
***
Alexis got back to the precinct to be brought up to speed by her analysts. She sat through: the video of the murder in the palazzo of the conflict diamonds advocate; the taped interviews by Herron and his three detectives, revealing yet another, third party, a woman, Iona Pax, drawn in to the mix, ironically to challenge the stability of their relationship. If so, it fit her thesis of the two of them continuing to test their homoerotic love for one another to make sure nothing could come between them.
When she asked how they’d hooked up with the woman, the analysts showed her the stills of the two headless, handless bodies in the men’s room of the Ashcot art house. And then, of course, she watched the highlights of the brutal beating of the two thugs on the city street, assembled from all the best angles and footage from all the cameras.
“Ideas, gentlemen?” Alexis said. The prattle they bombarded her ears with from all sides of the table did something unexpected. It made her feel less of a Neanderthal than usual. She’d pretty much come to the same conclusions herself. Maybe that meant something. Maybe it meant that—more so than with other killers of the day—these two wore their psychologies on their sleeves, and the slipperier they thought they were being, the more they were pointing the light on themselves. She could only hope.
THIRTY-NINE
“Hi, sweetie!” Alexis caught her six-year-old running into her hands and dangled her overhead before giving her a kiss. By next year, this ritual would pass to dad, as she would be too big for mommy to lift, leaving Alexis to find some less demonstrative way to show her excitement at seeing her daughter. They celebrated entrances and exits around here better than hammy stage actors, and Alexis had just walked through the front door, after one hell of a workday.
Her daughter Ellie shoved her crayon drawing in her face, which showed absolutely no talent, and which only a modern artist or a mother could love. Alexis had made out better with the Rorschach pictures at her last police psych profile examination. She couldn’t hazard a guess as to what was depicted on the paper. Alexis swooned over it as if beholding the ceiling of the Sistine chapel for the first time. “It’s lovely!”
“It’s a dog tearing the face off a cat.”
Maybe it was time for Ellie to visit the Rorschach-loving psychologist. Alexis was not about to find herself raising tomorrow’s sociopaths from within her normalcy-loving household as if they were the perfect antidote to it.
“Go hang it on the fridge, honey,” said Atam, her husband, entering the foyer from the kitchen, and kissing his wife. “We’ll go looking for the dog and cat tomorrow, providing we can find two just like it.”
Ellie jumped up and down excitedly, “Yes, yes, yes! I love you, daddy.” She bolted off to the kitchen to hang her masterpiece.
“This is the price of normalcy, just get used to it,” he said. “We have to expect our kids will grow up psychopaths just to see how the other side lives.”
Ellie didn’t laugh; instead she went straight for the decanter and poured herself a brandy.
“What’s wrong?” Atam asked.
“I’m chasing two psychopaths. It’s my latest case. And as best as I can determine, they grew up living perfectly normal lifestyles. Normal in every way.” She emptied the glass and poured another one.
“Ouch.” Atam took the glass out of her hand and poured the rest of the brandy back in the bottle. “In case you haven’t noticed, my profound, penetrating insights into life can all be bested by anything on the back of a cereal box.” He hugged her and kissed her on the head. “Besides, let’s not flatter ourselves. If opposites attract, then we’re not nearly well-adjusted enough to raise a couple of psychos.”
She laughed.
***
That night, after dinner, Alexis and Atam played a game of pick-up sticks with two of their children. Each of the kids concentrated on withdrawing a toothpick-thick plastic rod the length of a soda-straw with the concentration to detail usually reserved for brain-surgery. All in an effort to not drop the marbles held overhead in the tube the straws were bisecting. And after all that, the second one of them got all the rest of the marbles to plummet, she clapped with glee and screamed as if she had won the prize. Evidently, they were lost to the bliss of Piaget’s pre-rational era.
When the last straw on the last game was drawn, Atam said, “Time for bed, kids.”
Chorus: (her younger brother, Damian, joining in) “No!”
Chorus: (2nd stanza): “Say it isn’t true!” (said three times in quick succession)
Chorus: (refrain): “No! (all together): Just one more game, daddy.”
Atam: “Very well, I declare on this night, the fourth of June, that sleep is no longer mandatory. We shall play pick-up sticks through the night.”
Chorus: “Yay!”
Chanting: (all together): “Dad is great! Dad is great! Dad is great!”
Atam: “Who taught you to speak in stereo?”
Ellie: (already reassembling the game) “I’ve been staging this coup for months.”
The two adults smiled, and proceeded to watch the kids drop off one by one as the night wore on. Seven PM turned into eight PM, when they lost Damian. Eight PM turned into nine PM, when Ellie finally fell asleep with her eyes open to indicate her abject determination to resist to the bitter end.
Atam gingerly carted the two kids off to bed.
After depositing Ellie in her bedroom, he returned to find mom devouring a tub of Ben and Jerry’s on the sofa in front of the TV. Atam’s tub was awaiting him on the coffee table in front of her, spoon parked across the lid. He grabbed it, took his seat beside her, pressed up against her to feel the electrical charge of body contact. “I suppose it’s only proper of us to conceal our comfort-food-seeking behavior from them.”
“Leastways until they can reverse the national trend favoring diabetes in kids under twelve.”
Atam noticed her glum, preoccupied face. “What is it Rocky Road-ish can’t rectify?”
“I wonder if our insistence on a quiet middle class life and a loving household isn’t thwarting their success in life.”
“As opposed to what, giving them a head start on guile, manipulation, backstabbing, and all the ugliness of the world?”
“Would seem more socially conscious of us.”
“You just ignore the mad, mad world. It has always been mad and we’ve always held out. You know why?”
“No, why?”
After hitting the remote, he said, “Because we have the likes of James Cameron to help us exorcise all our love of adventure and excitement, so we can continue to embrace our dull, conventional lives.” An action sequence from Avatar played up his point.
“You think virtual reality can hold the real world together?”
“I sure hope so. The storytellers are the ones who make sense of life. The rest of us are too busy living it. These ports in the storm, these humdrum domestic lives we live that provide us an oasis, are enough to help us rest up. But not enough to give us a sense of the big picture. We’re a little too emotionally involved for that. That’s why you need those freaky misfit artists everyone thought were a little weird in school.”
She chuckled, and paid the price of having ice-cream shoot through her nose.
“Trust in the natural order of things.”
She said, “I will.” The declaration felt more like an act of will than an act of agreement. Then again, maybe in teaching their children how to love, how to make one another feel safe and accepted, and how to create an oasis for themselves in any spiritual desert, they were giving their kids everything they needed to fight the good fight. The accelerated learning curve they would need in the days ahead to face the crushing herculean pressures of the global marketplace would be powered off those numberless small acts of kindness to self and others.
FORTY
“I love these guys,” Cliff said. “I was thinking this was the tone we’d set; skirting the law like outlaw heroes.” He munched on his popcorn.
Renaissance 2.0: The Entire Series (books 1 thru 5) Page 119
