by phuc
Veronica felt certain it wasn't meant to be. "They're masterful men, as you'll soon see," he went on. "They look upon me as their pundit, so to speak. I'd like to think that much of their aesthetic insight comes from me."
As you you'll soon see? Veronica thought. What did that mean?
"I must tend to some things now. Dinner will be at seven."
Abruptly, Khoronos left them alone in the great room.
"This is really strange," Veronica said, and sat back down on the couch. She jiggled her ice in the spring water.
"I think it's fun. It's mysterious." Ginny grinned. "And we're definitely going to get laid."
"Ginny, we're not here to get laid."
"What, you took all that stuff he said seriously? Come on, Vern, it's all a game to him. He's rich and bored and he likes games."
"Keep your voice down," Veronica suggested.
"He thinks of himself as some artistic seer or something. It makes him feel good to invite artists up here and pretend he's teaching us something. All this whole thing is leading to is an orgy. The decadence of the idle rich."
"You're rich."
"Yeah, but I'm not idle. This whole thing's a party, so I'm gonna make the best of it. I'm gonna party my face off."
Some party. Veronica looked at her spring water. Khoronos had informed them that no alcohol was allowed in the house. No tobacco either, and no drugs, not that Veronica did them. "True artists must maintain immaculate spirits," their host had said. "Any substance which taints the spiritus is forbidden in my home."
Eventually she and Ginny went out on the balcony off the kitchen, a huge deck which overlooked the pool. A faint breeze rustled through the trees, and a scent of pine. "You sure changed your tune about Khoronos," Veronica said.
"Just because I know what makes him tick doesn't mean I don't want to get into his pants anymore." Ginny closed her eyes, turned her face to the sun. "I do and I will. And Marzen, Gilles I'll ride their brains out too. Everyone's got to cut loose sometime."
"Cut loose, huh? That's what life's all about?"
"You want to know what life's all about? First I'll tell you what it's not about. It's not about babies, two-car garages, a dog in the yard, and a station wagon in the driveway."
Ginny hated domesticity, but Veronica didn't know how she felt about that herself. Jack had never actually proposed to her, but the implication of marriage was clear. Had that been what scared Veronica off?
"It's about independence, Vern," Ginny continued. "That's the only way a woman can be free."
Veronica wanted to say something mean, like. You're only saying that because it's the only way you can rationalize two failed marriages. "Freedom and sexual abandon are synonymous?"
"Sexual liberty, smartass. If you don't do what you want, you're actually doing what someone else wants. Whether it's a person or society doesn't matter. It's subjugation. If a guy fucks everything that moves, that's okay because it's an accepted trend. But when a woman does it, she's a slut.
Men can be free but women can't. It's a bunch of sexist bullshit. My rebellion is my right of protest. I will not allow myself to be subjugated. I'll do anything I want, anytime I want."
Sometimes Veronica forgot she was talking to a notorious feminist. She wanted to argue with Ginny but couldn't. Veronica had thought that being in love was her freedom, but freedom had its price, didn't it? Experience, she thought. Being in love had kept her from experiencing what she felt she had to as an artist. Either way, she was torn between ideals.
Ginny lit a cigarette.
"Khoronos said no smoking," Veronica reminded.
"No smoking in the house; this is the balcony. And..." Ginny paused, peering down. "Well, what have we here?"
Marzen and Gilles walked across the backyard. Off one of the pool decks stood a rack of weights and a bench.
"See?" Ginny observed. "Men are such vain assholes. Without their muscles and their cocks they have no identities."
But Veronica remained looking on. Marzen and Gilles each peeled off their T-shirts and began curling dumbbells of formidable size. They seemed bored, curling the weights and speaking casually. They seemed to be speaking French.
"But I still love 'em," Ginny went on. "Check out the beefcake."
Veronica couldn't help not. In moments, their rippled backs shined, muscles flexing beneath their tanned skin. It was erotic, earthy, the way their sweat sheened their flesh. Veronica caught herself in a secret image: running her hands over those slick pectorals, exploring. At once she felt dizzy, like the first time she'd met Khoronos. She felt prickly.
"They know we're watching," Ginny said.
"They do not," Veronica objected. Or did they? Her throat felt thick. Next image: herself naked, squirming atop Marzen...
"And you're trying to tell me you don't want to cut loose?" Ginny continued to goad. "That's subjugation too. You're afraid to release your inhibitions. Is that freedom?"
Veronica felt lost in her imaginings.
Ginny crushed her cigarette and dropped it into the bushes below. "You know," she said, "men have been using women for the last fifty centuries. It's high time we started using them back."
Veronica imagined Marzen poised nude above her. His sweat was dripping off his chest onto hers, hot, like hot wax.
"They like to show off?" Ginny was saying. "I'll show them some showing off."
Veronica gasped within the frame of the vivid image. Marzen penetrated her. Her eyes closed, the image cocooned her. She could picture Marzen's penis sliding in and out...
Oh, for God's sake!
The fantasy was ridiculous, a useless breach of reality. She was like a high school girl dreaming of the quarterback.
"What the " Veronica turned, breaking her muse. "Ginny!"
"Hey, I'm showing off." Ginny had removed her blouse, braless beneath. She waved the blouse in the air, in circles. "Save your strength, fellas! You're gonna need it!"
"Ginny, are you nuts!"
Below, Gilles looked up at the spectacle and chuckled.
"That's one's mine," Ginny said.
But Marzen's face remained plain. He was not looking at Ginny. Instead, his eyes bored directly into Veronica's.
«« »»
Jack owned a century-old row house on Main Street, which he'd inherited from his father. The equity was preposterous. It had been purchased in the late fifties for fifteen grand; today he could sell it for three hundred grand, and it wasn't even in very good shape. Jack lived in the upstairs and rented the downstairs to a couple of college kids. The row house was essentially the only thing he had of real value.
He didn't sell because he liked it here. He liked the city's ambience or the persona, perhaps of its age and its history. His bedroom window showed him the City Dock; the bright vanishing point of Main Street to the sea looked surreal. He loved the faint salt scents off the bay, and the city's lights when it was late. He liked being lulled to sleep by the ghostly chimes of sail lines striking the masts of countless boats in the docks. The sound was indescribable.
He showered and dressed without really knowing what for. Never drink alone, Craig had once philosophized. Jack refused to keep liquor in the house, his only gesture of constraint. He could see himself in ten years, or even five a holed-in drunk, empty bottles piled high in the kitchen. At least in bars, someone else worried about the bottles.
Light classical issued from the dilapidated stereo; it was all he could listen to without being distracted. Distraction was any investigator's enemy. He wondered if love was too. How many marriages had exploded because of The Job?
Here is my love, he thought. He closed his eyes, to see it in his head, the neat red letters.
HERE IS MY LOVE
And the great star-pointed triangle.
Not an act of murder, an act of love. He remembered thinking that the instant he'd stepped into Shanna Barrington's bedroom. Karla Panzram had verified this, but with trimmings he couldn't imagine. The killer had taped her eyes
so she couldn't see what was coming, had tied her up so she couldn't move. He'd adored her as he extracted her entrails.
Shanna Barrington had been scarified, but to what? What madness? Aorista, Jack mused. He'd looked it up in his paperback Webster's but found nothing. The FBI's Triple-I interservice link had reported back this afternoon: nothing. And nothing yet from Randy's good squad. The Interpol run would take weeks, and even though Auxiliary Procurements had authorized his request for a researcher, there was nothing more on that either. Most murders were solved within forty-eight hours. After that, the apprehension statistics plummeted.
Suddenly he was staring at the portrait of himself. Veronica had painted it, an abstract mash of wedges and smears, the pieces of which formed his face. The likeness, now, was distressing it looked like a man falling apart. He wondered whose face she was painting now.
When the phone rang, he jumped. The word Veronica echoed somewhere deep. Don't be an asshole, he told himself. What reason would Veronica have to call him now?
"Cordesman," Jack said.
"Hi, Captain. Your man's jizz won't type. He's no secretor."
Jack's brow creased. No, it definitely wasn't Veronica, it was Jan Beck from the Technical Services Division. "The killer's you mean?" he asked.
"I'm not talking about Bullwinkle's sperm, sir. And I'll tell you something, this guy's got a lot of love."
Jan Beck's voice was ashy, soft, which never fit with the way she talked. Talking to her was like talking to one of the guys, or worse.
"What do you mean, Jan?"
"He gave it to her like it was going out of style. Cum City up there. Only thing that doesn't jibe is the timing."
"He wasn't in there long enough to do her a bunch of times."
"Then your estimations are wrong, or he's the fastest draw in the East. Average ejaculation's four to six milliliters, up to ten after a long dry spell. This guy left more than thirty hung up past the minus ridge, and that's not counting the wetspot, which looked about as big as the state of Alaska. My estimation, this guy blew eighty mils of the joy juice, probably more. I'd say she had ten guys in there with her, but the cum's all morphologically identical. And this girl was ready for it. This was no aggravated rape."
Willingness, Jack remembered, snapping a Camel. Karla Panzram said that willingness was a key word for Charlie. "You're saying that the victim was willing, right?"
"She was definitely willing, Captain. Her lube glands were drained. Average girl doesn't dry up till she's been getting it steady for a couple of hours."
"But there was blood in the vagina. Was it her period?"
"That was a cervical bleed," Jan Beck said. "Not a rape-related abrasion. Last night Shanna Barrington was the best-lubricated woman in the county. You can't argue with a chromatograph."
"Maybe he "
"No artificial lubes either; they would've been obvious on the source spectrum. And he didn't use spit. It was all her up there."
Jack gulped. This was getting gross, and, knowing Jan Beck, it would probably get a lot grosser.
"The blood was a capillary trauma. Ready for why?"
"No, Jan, but I have a feeling you're going to tell me anyway."
"The guy's hung, and I mean hung serious. Average girl's got about seven inches of loveway; Shanna Barrington had eight. Your man popped her cervix I've only seen that a couple of times.
This kind of bleed's minor because of the nature of the capillary structures of the cervical cap. It's common with girls who make these porno videos. They get all coked up can't feel a thing, then some guy rams his schlong up her cooze he's got more schlong than she's got loveway and force-dilates the cervical cap. Tears some minor vessels. Like I said, it happens sometimes, but what doesn't happen is the rest. Your man's rod was in her cap when he came; he blew his steam right up into her ampullae, and that's something I've never seen. The cervical channel is about a mil wide unless the girl's preggers, and the uterine line is essentially microscopic. Both were filled with his stuff. We're talking about a tremendous ejaculator. Dilating her cervix with his cock is rare, but this kind of seminal presence is downright unreal. Most pathologists would tell you it's impossible. This guy blew his load all the way up her repro tract. He came so much even her infundibula were distended. The fucker filled this poor girl up like you fill your unmarked at the motor pool."
Jack's stomach was beginning to sink.
"Average erection's about six inches. We're looking for someone with more than twice that, and that's very uncommon. I looked it up. We're talking about less than one tenth of one percent of the male pop. Your killer's a walking smokehouse, sir."
"You have a lovely way with words, Jan," Jack said. "Is the tox screen in yet?"
"Yes, sir. BAC was .01, she was buzzed but not shitfaced."
"Drugs?"
"Zip. No coke, pot, PCP, skag, no nothing."
What else did Panzram say? he tried to recall. "Did you run her blood for any synthetic morphine derivatives?"
"Of course. Zero. My spec is the girl wasn't into drugs and never has been. Even recreational users have a pot history, and one look at the brain tells all. Lipofusial rancidity, we call it. Shanna Barrington didn't have it. She had a clean brain."
A clean brain, Jack thought. He could easily picture Jan Beck removing the victim's cranial cap with a Stryker orbital saw, looking down, and saying, Yep, a clean brain.
"But there was one thing, sir." Beck's unearthly voice seemed to shimmer through a pause. "Was she a health nut?"
"I don't know. We don't know that much about her yet."
"I mean her place. You find any vitamins, herbs, health stuff?"
"No," Jack said.
"Her blood says she's pretty healthy, except for the booze. Her liver looks like a moderate drinker. The only real deficient blood levels were B6, C, and magnesium, which is common for anyone who drinks regular."
I better start taking vitamins, Jack supposed.
"We found something in her blood that's not CDS. It looks like an herbal extract or something."
"Maybe a designer drug."
"No way, wrong chain. It's something organic."
From his seat on the bed Jack expertly flicked his butt out the window. "Work on it. Anything you got. There's a real deadline on this." What else? Olsher, yes. "Olsher said you were doing an n/a/a-scrape."
"I'm in the middle of that now, I'm going to work all night. The resilience lines and entry patterns worry me. He's using a funny shank, I mean. The scrape-spectrum'll be in by morning. Come and see me."
"Okay, Jan. Thanks."
"Good night, sir."
Jack hung up, sputtering. In the mirror, he could not conceive that the reflection was his own: a pale stick-man sitting on a bed, smoking a Camel, long hair a wet mop in his face. Pretty as a picture, he thought.
He went to his dresser for socks. Beneath the socks was a picture of Veronica. He knew he should not be thinking about this now. He should be immersed in the Triangle case but the picture catalyzed him. It kicked his spirit back in time. Veronica was sticking her tongue out at the camera, holding a big cup of Guinness, her arm around Jack. Craig had taken the picture at the 'Croft last St. Patrick's Day. It was the day after Veronica had told Jack that she loved him.
One time she'd gone to Atlantic City with Ginny. She'd called long-distance just to tell him she loved him. Another time they'd been downtown with Randy and his girlfriend, having a good time, talking innocuously about innocuous things, and Veronica had inexplicably passed Jack a bar napkin on which she'd penned I love you.
These were just a few. How could something once so bright have turned so black? Now he could view the past as only a dead providence.
He shoved the picture back in the drawer.
He dawdled about the flat, kept glancing at the phone. You're an idiot, he concluded an hour later. She is not going to call you. Why should she call you? She broke up with you.
...his passion is purposive, Karla Panzram had
said. He's very passionate.
I love you, the bar napkin read.
HERE IS MY LOVE, the wall read.
This guy blew his load all the way up her repro tract.
Jack stared at the dresser mirror. "I am a very fucked-up person," he stated to it. His reflection looked like a stranger. There was a loose cannon in his town, cutting up girls alive, yet all Jack could think about was Veronica.
He looked deadpan at the phone.
