by J. A. Kerley
“You’re in the wrong bar, tubs,” he smirks. “The chairs are only rated for four hundred pounds.”
Debro smiles and waves, like he’s enjoying the sport. But inside, fear and shame.
“You know there’s a superchub bar in east Lauderdale, fat boy. Shouldn’t you be up there mixin’ with the Michelin Men?”
Superchubs were enormously obese gay men with a fetishistical following in some circles. Debro went to the bar once and it sickened him. Their look, their smell, their hairy grossness. Their joy at being fat. He wasn’t one of them.
“My crew and I have a bet, beefy. They think you need to put a bookmark in the flab rolls to find your dick. I think you wrap a string around it and let the string hang out. Which is it?”
Debro forces a grin to his face and mimes pulling a cord in front of his ponderous belly. “You win. It’s the string.”
Laughter, but not with him, at him. At his simpering, broken smile, at his self-loathing weakness. He should get up and punch the leader, beat his smirky face into a slimy puddle. He looks at his hands, but instead of balling into fists, they retreat beneath the table.
The red-haired guy spins to his companions and smirks, then turns to Debro. “We got another bet, doughboy. When you come, do you shoot lard?”
Over the years, Debro had been on the savage end of many nasty tongues, but Jacob Eisen had the nastiest of all, an acid-edged tongue that reveled in spewing insults and meanness …
Which was why Eisen no longer had the tongue. Twenty minutes ago Debro had reached into Eisen’s gaping mouth, snatched the tongue with pliers, pulled it as far out as possible. The tongue had offered less resistance than gelding a hog.
Eisen had started choking and Debro had rolled him to his belly where he moaned and gurgled and dug at his face as blood spilled across the floor. But now he seemed to have mostly forgotten the tongue, swimming around the room like a fucking mermaid. Justice had been done, and Eisen could go back to his filthy world. There were others awaiting punishment.
Debro returned to his apartment below, turning the TV to the LOGO channel and stripping off his shirt, preparing to pump iron, get the guns warmed up for the next challenge. He started to reset the weight on his ’bells, but stopped … hadn’t he just had a major triumph? It had been glorious, removing the little bastard’s instrument of hate, and as he had sawed at the slimy tongue, Debro had struggled to stay on task through a monumental orgasm.
A celebratory drink was called for.
Debro rolled the barbell back to the corner and went to the kitchen, catching his reflection in the glass of his cabinet doors. He was smiling. Debro studied himself as if seeing a well-done portrait, then stopped and admonished himself. Best not get too pleased. After all, hadn’t he fucked up his latest attempt by letting the pathetic, stuttering troll named Derek Scott escape into the street? Allowing him to run to the police?
It had been a major mistake on Donnie’s part.
Debro started laughing. He reached into the fridge and plucked out a beer. He was more invisible than ever.
28
Another fifteen-hour day became another fifteen hours lost in the crime-solving department, and the brother side of things was no better. It appeared Jeremy had decamped from Eastern Kentucky on a permanent basis.
After he’d escaped from everything the NYPD could throw at him (including, at times, me), his year-long disappearance had been one of the most difficult times in my life, with every phone call ringing the potential for life-changing horror: Hello, Detective Ryder? Captain Ralph Stewart here in Pittsburgh. We’ve caught a killer named Jeremy Ridgecliff. You ain’t gonna believe this, but the freak’s telling us you’re his brother and the reason he’s out on the streets. I know he’s bug-eye crazy, but you can appreciate we’ve got to rule out all the manure this loonie is spreading …
The thought of living that way again felt like a punch in the gut. But I concentrated on the single pleasant thought in my life, tonight’s dinner with Vivian Morningstar. I felt like a kid watching his Christmas tree burn from the bottom up: At least I could focus on the lovely angel up top until the flames arrived.
The restaurant was an intimate family place with six tables and a single waiter. I ordered a brew to sit across from her vino and we both ordered ropa vieja, that hearty Cuban dish of shredded beef cooked with tomatoes, onions and peppers and often served, as this was, with platanas maduros, black-ripe plantains sautéed in butter and demerara sugar.
We ate slowly to savor, speaking as we dined.
“How are things coming with the department?” I asked. “Prepping for the exit scene?”
She buttered a piece of steamy, fresh-baked bread. “The incoming path will share duties with Fontova and Nelson until getting a handle on things, then hopefully move into an upper-level position.” Pop … between her wide and lovely lips went the bread.
“Clean and efficient. How’s your staff taking it?”
“They’ll be happy to see the gorgon go.”
“Horsecrap. They revere you, Vivian.”
Rolled eyes to hide the embarrassment. “Misplaced, but yeah, some do. It’ll be hard, Carson. I’ve been there for a decade, and we hit some home runs.”
“You’ll hit more. Any thoughts on specialty?”
“I’ve not even started my courses. I can’t think about what I’ll—”
“You already have, Viv.”
Her fork paused mid-lift and the hazel eyes – shaded brown today – regarded me curiously. “Am I that transparent? Or are you that good at reading people?”
I smiled. “Some people.”
“Trauma appeals to me, working in an emergency room and making decisions, weighing alternatives, fast-running a list of potential solutions through my mind …” she paused and her eyes darkened. “The only thing that worries me is, what happens the first time I make a wrong decision and someone dies?”
“You answered yourself by saying ‘the first time’. You’ve acknowledged that death will happen – in that milieu it can’t not happen – and it’s a part of the job. All you can do is work the stats in your favor, which you’ll do by becoming one of the best there is.”
Another pause. “Have you ever made a mistake that cost someone’s life?”
“Yes. Usually by not getting to a solution quick enough. But when I mull over my mistakes, which I do in darker moments, I leaven them with counts of lives saved. There are more names in that column, Viv. A lot more.”
She thought for a moment and nodded. Then, as if feeling the conversation had gone far enough down that road, her face brightened and she reached for my hand. “I was thinking this afternoon … I basically only know about you from your college days onward. Aimless for a couple years, the odd jobs. Until your friend Harry Nautilus convinced you to become a cop. But what about family? Do you have siblings?”
I took a sip of beer to dampen my upcoming lies and revisited the “only-child” scenario I’d glibly espoused dozens of times before. Only three living people knew of my brother: Harry Nautilus, Clair Peltier, and a troubled and alcoholic Mobile pathologist named Ava Davanelle, fired long ago.
Jeremy had injured me during a trip to the institute for advice on a case – he exacted a horrific price back then – and when Ava nursed my wounds I had confessed my secret. Ava had seemed fascinated by the depressing horror of my childhood and the claws by which it still clutched my daily life, and she demanded to accompany me on my follow-up trip to the Institute, where more information from Jeremy would require another payment of pain.
The confrontation between Jeremy and Ava had been searing. Made a hater of women by our mother’s retreats from responsibility, Jeremy had circled Ava like a hawk, belittling her with every swooping pass: “A tender li’l thing like you wading through DEAD BODIES, Miz Davanelle? Ha! Do you pick at them … a pinch of tissue here, a strand of sinew there? Or do you just watch as a LOWLY MAN DOES THE WORK? What DO YOU do with bodies, sweet thang?”
Ava had refused to be cowed by his taunts, and actually seemed to enjoy the dangerous confrontation with my erratic, angry brother. “I do a lot of things with dead bodies, Mr Ridgecliff,” she’d calmly replied. “But most of all I like to slice open their bellies, climb inside and paddle them around like canoes.”
I had been amazed by the power with which the formerly shy and meek woman had constrained and confounded my brother. Every lie he threw she turned into wounding truths and threw back harder, and I had watched breathlessly, afraid Ava would finally push Jeremy into violence. But somehow – through instinct or luck – she sensed where Jeremy’s boundaries lay, and we all survived that dark evening. In the end, Ava had won: Jeremy was confounded and silenced by her courage, which kept him from injuring me further.
In retrospect, I think Ava forced Jeremy to look within himself during the following days, and in that time he began to change. And though he would never be normal, he ceased to be the lit stick of dynamite that had darkened our relationship since his incarceration. I received no more shrieking midnight calls. No more babbling, incoherent threats. And he never again needed to cause me physical pain.
I looked up from my memories into Vivian’s expectant eyes. The old lie was on my tongue: A happy childhood, I’d say, ending with the unfortunate revelation that my father had been lost in a plane crash when I was ten and my mother perished quietly from cancer.
But the old lies got stuck in my throat. “I, uh … that is—”
Morningstar giggled, thinking I was playing a game. “What? You’ve forgotten if you have brothers and sisters?”
I set aside my glass and measured out my words. “I have a brother, Vivian. He’s six years older than me and we’ve had some difficult times. I’m a little worried about him right now, but I’m hopeful things will work out.”
“What’s his name?”
Thomas … Eliot … Blake … William …
“Jeremy.”
Everything I’d said was factual, though ninety-nine per cent was missing. Still, it was the first time – outside of the aforementioned trio – that I’d admitted to a brother, much less spoken his name.
Morningstar held her wineglass in toast position. “To you and your brother, Carson. May everything work out between you two.”
I tapped her glass with mine.
“To us, then. Brothers.”
29
Morningstar and I spent the night at the Palace and rose as dawn painted the sky with pastel shades Degas would have envied. The day might have been perfect had not Donnie Ocampo been eluding capture at every turn. Morningstar had early meetings at the morgue, and I wanted to find something, anything, that would put me in Donnie Ocampo’s path. I dropped her at her office before nine and was racing to the Clark Center when my phone rang: Roy.
“I just got word, Carson,” he said. “Donnie’s left another one.”
I pulled into a parking spot, heart racing.
“Is it bad, Roy?”
“He’s, uh … Christ Jesus, Carson. The vic was being rushed to Baptist North, but MDPD intervened and the bus went to MD-Gen. I’ll meet you there.”
I was at the hospital in twenty minutes, my time from car to hospital wing about one minute, running the stairs and arriving at the room with tongue and shirt tail hanging. Roy was leaning the door frame and simply looked at me and blew out a breath. I went inside and saw the patient in the bed had the lower half of his face under thick gauze, tubes running into the padding. Costa was at the man’s side, pumping medicine into a shunt. He looked at me with sad eyes.
“He can’t talk to you, Detective Ryder. I mean that literally.”
“What happened, Doc?”
Costa swallowed hard. “He’s had his tongue cut out.”
I felt my breath leave my lungs. “How is he?”
“There was major loss of blood, but not life-threatening. The amputation was recent – in the last twelve hours – so infection hasn’t had time to set in. Other injuries included contusions on the knees and elbows. A large swelling on his forehead.”
“How about the drawing on his back?”
Costa shook his head. “It’s not there.”
“What?”
“His posterior is perfectly clear, unmarked.”
I blinked, unbelieving. Everything I had theorized about Donnie Ocampo told me he had to scrawl the figure. It was part of his inner mythology.
Did we have a copycat?
“You’ve run the rape kit?” I said. “Started the tox screens?”
“Rush on everything. Results within two hours.”
I pulled my sheet of missing men from my briefcase, though I was familiar with every missing man between the ages of sixteen and forty. Given the hair and eye color – and a floral tattoo on his right forearm – our victim was Jacob Eisen, twenty-eight, a worker at a local Amazon shipping center. He’d been reported missing by a roommate and was last seen at a bar just south of downtown. That much jived with Donnie’s previous captures.
I turned to Roy. “Where was he found?”
“Tossed out behind a strip mall in Lauderdale, exact time unknown.”
“In the city? Not out by the Glades?”
“In the concrete heart of Lauderdale.”
Another anomaly. The possibility of a copycat marauder grew larger. The media had carried stories about the abductions, but thanks to intentionally vague police reports and close-mouthed hospital employees, we’d managed to keep starker details from the newsies, knowing the perp would be dubbed Loco-Man or whatever and turned into a media sideshow. Idiot kids would go into fields looking for jimson weed, thinking they’d get a nice high. Dieffenbachia sales would spike city-wide. I’d once made a press-conference mistake of mentioning the brand of wood chipper used to shred a body, and the manufacturer called a month later to thank me, saying regional sales had risen thirty-seven per cent.
But the full truth would come from the rape kit. Only two people had Donnie’s DNA, and one of them was incapable of the crimes.
“How’d the victim get found?” I asked Roy.
“A delivery guy was pulling behind the buildings to drop off chemicals for a laundromat and nearly creams a naked guy walking in circles with dried blood running from his mouth to his toes.”
“How’d you find out so soon … Vince Delmara call?”
“No. It was Rod Figueroa.”
“Figueroa? What?”
“Eisen would still be on the Missings list, right?”
“Yep. But with the urgency I don’t see the street cops saying, ‘Hey, why don’t we call ol’ Rod in Missings and tell him he can pull one off the list?’”
“He must be keeping an eye out for similar crimes. Is it important?”
I waved it off. “What’s important is getting into Donnie’s head, Roy. Before even he doesn’t know what his next move is.”
Roy hustled outside, needing a cigar to calm his restless fingers. I called Gershwin and told him I’d handle the scene and to start scoping out Eisen’s digs and canvassing neighbors.
I flipped on the screamer and burned up I-95 to Lauderhill, cut east to Sunrise Boulevard, passing blocks of newer development to an older section of strip centers, car dealers, fast-food emporia. The strip mall was called Sunrise Commons and in the process of renovation, most stores empty with signs promising something new within weeks. There were several active businesses including a dry cleaners and a little pizza joint. As directed, I pulled around back where I saw a forensics unit mobile lab.
I saw Deb Clayton beside huge trash bins, directing techs taking scrapings from the pavement. I pulled to the scene tape and hustled to Deb, currently wiping her shades on the tails of a blouse the same pink as her crime-scene booties.
“Find anything?” I asked.
“Lots of spatter and footprints where he stepped in the blood. We can trace his path, which was basically a ten-foot circle. We’ll go through the damn trash,” she added, pointing at a big container marked GMSC. “But y
our boy hasn’t left anything at previous scenes, so I expect all we’ll get is stinky.” She nodded at the surrounding buildings. “Not quite rural here, Carson. From the backcountry to the back of a strip center … It’s like he did a one-eighty.”
“I’m afraid we might be seeing a copycat, Deb.”
“Because of the change in dumping venue?”
“And a couple other aspects that don’t jive with the previous attacks.”
I jogged to the front of the long building, passing a defunct bowling alley and two empty shops, ending at a strangely wide door with the letters GMSC painted on it in ornate letters. I stepped inside to the sound of Lady Gaga on a jukebox beside the door.
The outside sun was bright and my eyes had to adjust to diminished lighting. As objects resolved I saw less a tavern than a fraternal organization, like an Elks club. A small bar in a corner fronted a rack of liquor bottles and three beer taps. I turned to a wall of booths, but mostly it was tables and chairs. The chairs were big and wooden and sturdy and a few overstuffed lounge chairs were scattered about. A television above the bar was playing a silent Food Channel, a handsome and heavyset woman layering cheese and prosciutto and olives on to a slab of bread.
“Go, Contessa!” someone yelled. “Pile it on, baby.”
I turned to a man of four hundred or so pounds sitting in a lounge chair in a corner and thumping its arm with the butt of a bottle of beer. His remark generated applause and laughter from four other similarly large men playing cards at a nearby table. In all, I counted eleven men in attendance, nine of them morbidly obese, and two of normal size. Most were in their thirties, a couple guys nearing forty. Three were so large I wondered if they’d had to butter themselves to slip in the door, wide as it was.
Puzzled, I walked toward the bar where an obese, thirtyish man was stacking washed glasses in a rack, enough material in his Hawaiian shirt to cut placemats for a luau. Behind him were several framed eleven-by-seventeen photos of huge men holding loving cups or award ribbons. A banner behind a man so obese his features seemed to have sunken into his cheeks proclaimed Chubby Champion, 2012 Southeastern Convergence.
