Body Language

by James W. Hall

  “I haven’t read any papers.”

  “Well, he killed another one, dropped her body Friday night in the goddamn vacant lot outside Miami PD. You know that sandy place beside the parking garage? Dribbled his blood right up the front steps of the department. Big spectacle. The press loved this one to death. Had helicopters circling, satellite trucks blocking both ends of the street. You gotta get back to work, Alex; your guy’s about to blow wide open. That’s what it looks like.

  “And oh, yeah, the pathology boys determined that he does them with a piece of glass, a little shard of mirror he uses as a blade. That’s the latest. The ME found traces of the silver backing they use on mirrors in a couple of the wounds. An old mirror, he says, though how he determined that is beyond me. And there’re paint particles in the wounds, too, little specks of black oil-based paint.”

  “Paint?”

  “Hey, it’s getting weirder and weirder, Alex. If you don’t hurry, this thing’ll get solved without you. You won’t get any of the fucking glory.”

  “That’s fine by me.”

  “Where’d you say you were staying?”

  “I’m out of town.”

  “Where out of town?”

  “I can’t tell you, Dan.”

  “You can’t tell me. Why’s that?”

  “What about the bruises?”

  “The bruises?”

  “On the victims’ faces. The ME have anything on them?”

  “Nothing in his report. Not that I recall. They’re just bruises. Why?”

  She watched as Lawton rose from his rocker and said hello to a white-haired lady walking down the center of the street. She returned his greeting cheerfully and came over to the porch.

  “Look, Dan, I called to tell you I was safe and to see if you’d caught Gabriella Hernandez’s killers.”

  “Nothing to go on yet. No eyewitnesses, nothing. Just a bunch of Mac-ten slugs.”

  “I called it in, Dan. Friday, I called nine one one and gave a description of the killers and their truck.”

  “You did?”

  “I did, yes.”

  “Well, it never made it to my desk. Or anybody else’s I know about.”

  “Goddamn it.”

  “So you saw them, did you? What, you were there at the time?”

  She told Dan about the young woman and the man and the blue pool truck. She described them, their clothes, the girl’s weird eyes, the huge guy.

  “Were they Cubans?”

  “I don’t think so. It wasn’t about Gabriella. This isn’t political.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Look, Dan. Are you awake now? Can you make sense of this if I tell you the whole thing?”

  “I haven’t been to bed yet. Oh, I been to bed, but I haven’t been to sleep, if you catch my drift.”

  The hooker giggled.

  Lawton and the white-haired woman were chatting through the screen. She was laughing at something he’d said.

  “So listen, Dan. Just listen to me, okay? Don’t interrupt. I don’t think I can do this if you trip me up.”

  She told him about Stan, the armored-truck robbery. She told him she’d wound up with the money from the heist, and that the people who killed Gabriella were most likely after that.

  As she spoke, Lawton wandered into the house and stood for a moment gazing up at the circling ceiling fan.

  “That was Grace,” Lawton said. “That was my wife.”

  He looked at her, smiled, and drifted into Alex’s bedroom, humming to himself.

  “You still there?”

  “I’m here,” Dan said. Cop voice. Hard-edged. Wide fucking awake.

  “I guess you want to know why I have the money.”

  “That would be a good place to start.”

  “It kind of fell in our laps. Then a little while later, we were at Gabriella’s, and the bullets started flying. I was out of it, Dan, totally panicked. My husband is a thief and killer, my best friend murdered right in front of me.”

  “So that’s it? That’s your defense? You panicked? Drove off somewhere with two million dollars?”

  “Look, Dan, you’re going to have to trust me. The money’s coming back. I just had to get out of harm’s way for a day or two. I couldn’t leave the cash behind, could I? Let the shooters have it?”

  “So you ran. So you’re hiding out somewhere.”

  “I ran, yes. But I’m coming back. Tomorrow, the next day, as soon as I get something settled here.”

  “Oh, good. I’ll call the Brinks people, let them know. One of our ID techs has your two million, but don’t worry, she’s coming back sometime soon. Trust me.”

  Lawton called out to Alex from the bedroom.

  “I’ve got to get a situation worked out first; then I’m coming back.”

  “What situation? What the hell’re you talking about?”

  “Something happened to me a long time ago, Dan. There was a crime involved, something bad. It got covered up, but now it’s got to come out in the open, and when it does, I’m going to need your help in a big way. This could get very ugly. Stan’s going to try to incriminate me, bargain down his charges. He’s going to be saying some nasty stuff.”

  “Wait a minute, wait a minute. You’re losing me, Alex. I’m not following this.”

  “I’m trying to tell you, Dan. It’s hard to get out, that’s all. Bear with me, all right? Cut me some slack here.”

  Lawton shouted her name. His voice with a rising edge.

  “Hold on, Dan, just a second, okay?”

  “I have a choice?”

  She went into the bedroom and Lawton was standing at the foot of her bed, looking down at the four crime-scene photographs. Her fanny pouch was lying on the floor at his feet. Lawton had arranged the snapshots in correct chronological order and placed them side by side.

  “Dad! What have you been doing in my purse?”

  “Alex,” he said.

  “I’m here, Dad.”

  “No, Alex. A-L-E-X. The name.”

  She stepped to his side and stared down at the photos.

  “A,” he said, counting them off. “L, E, X.”

  She looked at the four dead women.

  They seemed very far away. The photographs, the bed. She felt the blood drain from her legs. Her cheeks were so stiff and numb, they felt frostbitten. A yellow glaze pressed on the edges of her vision.

  “Alex,” Lawton said. “So do you know this guy or what?”

  She turned from the bed, drifted back to the living room, picked up the phone. The air was thin, the light excruciating. Her eyes wouldn’t focus. Parched, she felt the breath burning her throat, as if she had been wandering the desert for weeks. Her voice was reedy when she spoke.

  “Dan?”

  “Hey, I hate it when somebody calls me, then fucking puts me on hold. That’s pretty goddamn discourteous, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Dan.”

  “Still here, sweetheart. Hanging by a thread.”

  “The body you found, the new girl.”

  “One in the parking lot?”

  “Yeah. Was she twisted up like the others?”

  “Whole new position. One we haven’t seen before. Haven’t even given her a name yet. Kicking around a few ideas, but nothing’s stuck.”

  “Don’t tell me,” she said. “Let me describe it, the position she was in.”

  “Yeah? And how you going to do that? You been taking clairvoyant lessons?”

  “She was placed on her side, with her knees cocked up, arms flat against her side. Like the letter N.”

  Dan was silent for a moment. The hooker squawked behind him, a burst of impatience. Alexandra heard him breathing into the mouthpiece.

  “Okay, yeah. I guess you could describe it that way. It’s like an N. What? You talk to somebody in the office?”

  “I haven’t talked to anyone but you.”

  “Okay, I’ll bite. How’d you know?”

  Her voice surprised her when she spo
ke. How empty it was, how far off.

  “He’s spelling my name, Dan.”

  Lawton came out into the living room. He’d unzipped his blue jumpsuit to his waist and was trying to get the zipper back up, but it was caught on the fabric.

  “Spelling your name? What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Think about it. He’s twisted the victims into letters.”

  “Letters?” He paused for a moment, then said, “Aw shit.”

  “A, Gasper. L, Hear No Evil. E, The Swatter. X, Floater. And then A again. And now N. It was looking us in the face the whole time.”

  Dan said, “Where are you, Alex?”

  “I can’t tell you.”

  “Where, goddamn it?”

  “I’m going to hang up now, Dan. I’ll call you later.”

  “Is it at least safe there?”

  “It is, yes. It’s famous for its safety.”

  “Then stay there. Stay put.”

  “Okay.”

  “What’s this about, Alex? Why’s this fuckhead spelling your name?”

  “Maybe it’s not me. Maybe it’s some other Alexandra.”

  He gave that a few seconds’ consideration.

  “No, you’re right,” he said gloomily. “That must be why he left the last one at the police station, a trail of his blood up the front steps. We weren’t getting it. We were being too stupid. So he lays one right under our noses and we still don’t get it. What the hell’s this about, Alex? What the fuck is going on here?”

  “I don’t know, Dan.”

  Frustrated with his zipper, Lawton began to whimper.

  “I’ll call you back tonight, okay? Give us both a chance to think this over, see what it might mean.”

  “You got a weapon, some way to defend yourself?”

  “He doesn’t know where I am. Don’t worry about me, Dan. Let’s just think this through. We’ll talk tonight.”

  “Goddamn psychologists, that’s who’s to blame here. Fuckers get paid for being so damn smart; well, they’re too fucking smart for their own good. Best police work is stupid and simple. Look at the obvious, see what’s right in front of you. But no, the shrinks got us going off into some never-never land, all this childhood re-enactment bullshit.”

  “Tonight, Dan,” she said, and hung up.

  The beach was empty.

  Alex walked along the water’s edge.

  Head buzzing with shock, she couldn’t remember the day of the week, the month, the season. She had no idea of the year, the century, which planet, which galaxy. She couldn’t recall her name or the date of her birth or why she was even there at all. Filled with hot white noise, she was as blank and vacant as Mr. M., as though her own hippocampus had been vacuumed away through a silver straw. A slate as clean as the white sands that stretched before her, as pure as the cloudless sky, as barren as the air. She could remember nothing. It was as if she had breathed too deeply of that transparent air and it had somehow permeated her blood, dissolved every worrisome thought, the dreary weight of her past, the accumulated residues of a lifetime.

  She kicked off her shoes, carried them along as she continued her walk down that empty beach, letting her feet sink into the crystalline sand, feeling the grit, its pleasant burn between her toes. She looked out to sea, the water still today, and bluer than it had ever been before. As blue as it would ever be. And the sky was bluer still and even calmer than the sea.

  Along her way, she saw three sand castles rubbed smooth by the wind, the ceaseless breeze eroding them back to shapeless humps of sand. She saw a couple of molded human forms, primitive sand sculptures, featureless beings with arms and legs sprawled out like pale sunbathers. She saw a discarded towel and a candy wrapper tumbling past her feet and a twisted aluminum chair half-buried in a drift of white sugar.

  She walked and walked until the beach ran out of sand. Until the daylight began to drain away and the prism of the sky was spraying the full spectrum of light into the western horizon, bright bands of gold and red and green and yellow.

  She turned and walked back down the beach, but she was without destination. There was nowhere to go. No appointments, no responsibilities. Absolved of every moment but this one. Unfettered by the noise of memory, the whispering spirits of long ago, the great choirs that sang their hymns of lost days.

  Twilight in the air, twilight in her head. With the sea to her right and the land to her left and the sky far away overhead. She could look and see. She could breathe. She could move. But there were no memories.

  If only for that little while, she had no past. If only for that hour, that exhilarating emptiness, that buoyancy. The thrilling release.

  A mile, two miles, Alexandra marched back down the beach and with every step she felt gravity’s return. Twenty-nine years old. October, the twentieth century, the earth with all its buried treasures, its ancient artifacts, its archives, its scriptures. The past, the past, growing heavy in her blood.

  Alexandra Rafferty had captured the fascination of a killer. Six women had died on her behalf. Murdered so a goddamn maniac could conjure her, spell her out, so she would know that he existed, feel his presence, experience the depth of his tortured love. Some bullshit like that.

  Alex marched back to the dunes of Seaside and with every step the hot white static of shock dwindled.

  A killer had made love to six women and while looking into their helpless eyes, he had sliced their throats. Driven by his mad craving, he laid these twisted offerings before Alex, as if it were a private performance, his idea of seduction, his tease, his purgation. Then the freak drizzled out his trail of blood so that Alex might bear witness to his yearning, so she might tremble at the intensity of his agonizing love.

  So she might hear his cry:

  Who am I and why am I doing this?

  What do I have in store for you?

  Alexandra climbed one of the graceful Seaside stairways that swept up the steep dunes like the sculptured crest of a wave. It was dark now, cool and breezy. She’d left her father alone for hours. She’d lost her mind and gotten it back.

  Some bastard had murdered six young women simply to spell out her name.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  I went out for a walk, that’s all. You weren’t here. Your boyfriend wasn’t here, so I took a stroll and I met Grace. She lives two blocks from here. I wish you wouldn’t yell at me all the time.”

  Alex squared her shoulders, took a breath. She looked at Jason rinsing dishes. He was keeping his head down, amused but trying not to show it. She looked at her father. She wanted to hit something. To drive her fist through the walls of the house. Again and again, till she’d mangled her hand, turned it to pulp.

  “Her name is Grace,” Lawton said. “I met her through the screen this afternoon; then I went over to see her. Two streets over, that’s where she lives, and she remembers us from when we were here before. Mellow Yellow, that house we rented. She remembers that. She remembers your sand castle, too. She loaned me this camera to use while we’re here. To document our once-in-a-life-time vacation.”

  Lawton craned his neck and peered down into the pop-up lens of the Brownie Reflex, aimed it at Jason. He was putting the last of the plates in the dishwasher. He’d made lasagna from scratch, and a Caesar salad, French bread. A store-bought Key lime pie for dessert. Alex tried to eat but couldn’t. She apologized, didn’t try to explain.

  “Go on, Alexandra, go over and stand next to your boyfriend. Yeah, yeah, I know how you hate having your picture taken, but you always love looking at the photos later on. You just have to realize, sweetheart, you can’t have the looking without the posing. Now come on, shake a leg.”

  Alex closed her eyes and opened them. Nothing had changed. Jason was watching her, keeping the smile off his lips, but it still lurked in his eyes. She walked over and stood next to Jason. He put his arm across her shoulder.

  “Okay, good. Now come on, you two, I want you to say cheese. Don’t pout, give Daddy a smile you’ll be proud of later
on. Let’s see those pearly whites.”

  Her father snapped the picture, then rolled the knob on the bottom of the camera to advance the film.

  “Memories to last a lifetime.”

  “Dad, where’d you get the camera?” She pulled away from Jason.

  “I told you. Her name is Grace. She’s an herbalist. Two streets over. Got a pantry full of pills. Never saw so many vitamins in all my life. Must work, though, ’cause she says she’s seventy-two, but I’d swear she isn’t a day over thirty. Claims she knows just the thing I need for sharpening up my memory. Combination of five, six pills, roots and bark and flower stalks. That kind of thing. I think she’s part witch, got her little stew pot bubbling away. But she’s a good witch. Says her name is Grace. Which rings a bell with me.”

  “I told you just this afternoon—I don’t want you going off on your own, Dad. Is that clear? Can you remember that simple thing?”

  “He met somebody,” Jason said. “What’s wrong with that?”

  Jason slipped the leftovers into the fridge, recorked the cabernet.

  “I don’t want him wandering around. Especially not now.”

  “Why? What’s happened?”

  She turned and looked at the dark window.

  “Nothing’s happened. It’s just not safe.”

  “Hey, Alex, we’re a long way from Miami. This place is Mayberry, USA. They don’t lock their doors; they keep their windows wide open. Hell, they don’t even have a Barney Fife.”

  “There’s no sheriff in Seaside? No law enforcement?”

  “That’s right.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “What’s wrong with you, Alex? Why’re you snapping at me?”

  “I’m not snapping. How do you know there’s no sheriff?”

  Jason rinsed off his hands, wiped them with the dish towel, and hung it back on the rack. He gave her a hurt look.

  “Because I asked at the front desk. The nearest police are in Panama City. Maybe forty-five minutes to an hour away. They cruise by now and then, but there’s no one posted here.”

  “Why’d you ask, Jason?”

  “I wanted to know. That’s all. I mean, come on, Alex, this place is as safe as it gets. What’s the harm if Lawton walks around a little, enjoys himself?”