The Sleeping and the Dead

by Jeff Crook

  At the first snap, Dr. Wiley glared up from his open tackle boxes. “Keep her back!” he shouted. Chief Billet smiled and waved me on, so I continued to shoot. I took several photos of the bottoms of the victim’s feet, which were black with grime. I saw no signs of blood on either the stage or the mattress.

  Dr. Wiley had his techs spread a sheet of plastic next to the body and then lift the mattress aside and lay it on the sheet. Dave, the theater manager, turned green and asked Adam if he could leave. Adam nodded and he hurried up the aisle with one hand over his mouth.

  I snapped some shots of the cops standing around the stage in this surreal overhead light, with the darkness stretching up and away behind them. At the rear of the highest balcony, I noticed a young girl standing under an Exit sign, watching us work. I turned my Canon on her and looked at her through the viewfinder, but the screen was empty. I didn’t say anything. Nobody else would be able to see her.

  Wiley spoke into a digital recorder, describing the state of the victim. “Black male, early twenties, approximately five-ten, one hundred and thirty pounds, nude, discovered lying facedown beneath a mattress. A three-foot length of electrical conduit is lodged in the victim’s anus.”

  “I think the cause of death is obvious,” Chief Billet said.

  Dr. Wiley laughed once, derisively, as he knelt over the body. I locked myself up cold and tight and kept shooting pictures. Treat it like a specimen, an object of study rather than horror. Focus on the details, the minutiae of visual data. Ignore the person, no matter how familiar he seems. This was a stranger, not a ghost from my past. Luckily, I couldn’t see his face.

  Wiley continued, “There are no other signs of external trauma. Deep coloration of the buttocks suggests cause of death to be asphyxiation.” He glared at Chief Billet as he said this.

  “Get it?” one of the cops grunted. “Ass-fixiation?” A sophomoric snicker circled the stage. Wiley rolled his bloodshot eyes.

  “TOD?” Billet asked.

  Wiley extracted a long probe thermometer from the torso and examined it. “Less than four hours.”

  “What about an ID?”

  “He’s naked,” Wiley said. “If I see his wallet lying around, I’ll let you know.”

  “You don’t have to be a smartass, Paul,” Billet said. He turned to Adam. “Well, McPeake? Is this the work of our boy?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  Several cops groaned or swore. “Why not?” Billet asked.

  Adam said, “It’s not consistent with his pattern. The Playhouse Killer stages his victims in murder scenes from famous plays.”

  “You can’t get a bigger stage than the Orpheum.”

  “But it’s not from any play I know. Dave agrees.” He nodded at the theater manager, who seemed even paler than before. “I think maybe this guy’s a copycat.”

  “Great,” Billet said. He paced the stage with his hands behind his back, while Wiley smirked and bagged the victim’s hands. “That’s just fucking great. That’s all we need right now.” His voice boomed through the auditorium, resounding in the shadows of the balconies and galleries. I looked for the little girl beneath the Exit sign, but she wasn’t there anymore. Two in one day—that was a bad sign.

  “I think the killer felt remorse and tried to cover up the body with the mattress,” Adam said, but something about this didn’t ping. The mattress looked like it had been pulled out of a Dumpster. He must have brought it with him, which meant he had planned it this way, for whatever reason.

  “You’re the expert, McPeake,” Chief Billet said. “Now tell me what I’m supposed to tell the cameras.”

  Adam shrugged.

  “Jesus!” the crime-scene tech swore. Dr. Wiley hurried over with a plastic bag to catch the sludge flowing from the pipe rammed up the victim’s anus.

  “Flesh is cauterized and fused to the metal,” he said as he examined the point of insertion. “It must have been red hot when inserted.”

  “Marlowe!” I shouted. Everybody stared at me. I had known some of these cops from when I was on the force myself, but most of them wouldn’t speak to me now. To them, I was just a junkie mooching off the chief’s generosity. A few of them had heard about my bad habit of seeing people who weren’t there, and I’m sure they thought I was talking to one of my special friends again.

  Billet was one of them. He lifted a curious eyebrow. “Well?”

  But I wasn’t crazy, not this time. I had read about this scene in an English history course in college. “This is from Edward the Second by Christopher Marlowe,” I said. “According to Thomas More, Edward was smothered with a mattress, then a red-hot copper pipe was shoved up his butt.” The brutality of historical British executions had been one of Professor Cromwell’s favorite subjects. Writing about a truly grisly one, like Edward II’s, was a good way to get an A in his class.

  “Adam?” Billet turned to his expert.

  Adam shrugged. “That scene was never in Marlowe’s play.”

  I said, “Edward’s death was. The killer’s not re-creating, he’s interpreting. He’s making it his own. Maybe he’s a frustrated playwright.”

  “Write us a book report,” Billet said. “What I want to know is why did they shove a pipe up his ass?”

  “You ever see the movie Braveheart?” Billet nodded that he had. “Edward the Second was Longshanks’ gay son.”

  It was like a light came on over the heads of the cops around me. “That movie’s fucking awesome,” one said.

  “Then this is the work of our killer?” Billet started straightening his tie.

  “Provided the victim is gay,” Adam said. We wouldn’t know for sure until he was identified, but there wasn’t much doubt anymore. It fit his pattern. The Playhouse Killer’s last victim had been staged in a scene from Shakespeare’s Richard III, but this was his first murder in a long time, and his boldest and most public staging by far.

  Chief Billet winked at me and slipped out to talk to the reporters, while Wiley continued his work in sullen silence. He wouldn’t look at me now, not even when I took a picture of him bending over the body. Adam was talking to some guys dusting for fingerprints near the backstage door. It was pretty clear from the placement of the body and the lack of blood that the victim hadn’t been killed here. He must have been brought in, but how had he done that in a public place like the Orpheum without being seen?

  Adam waved for me to follow him. I started putting my cameras away, but as Wiley and his assistant turned the body over, I almost dropped the Leica.

  I hurried across the stage and grabbed Adam by the elbow, pulled him behind some scenery so the other cops wouldn’t overhear. “Adam,” I said. “I know this kid.”

  I had met him about five hours ago.

  3

  A LIGHT MIST WAS FALLING through the sycamore trees. The driveway was packed with cars of all makes, models and conditions, from brand-new Acuras and BMWs to rusted-out junkers with hocked titles and plastic sheeting duct-taped over busted windows. The house rose up in the darkness beyond the driveway, bowed and swollen, light streaming from every window like a house afraid of its own shadows. Adam and I climbed the steps to the porch.

  “You met the victim here?” he asked. I nodded and shook the water from my hair. “How do you know Michi Mori?”

  “He promised to sponsor an exhibition of my photography.”

  “Is that why you were here today?”

  “Yeah.” I couldn’t tell him the truth, so I pushed the glowing yellow doorbell button.

  “Did you hear about that cop?” he asked as we waited for someone to answer.

  “Which one?”

  “That accident over on Union.”

  “What about him?” I knew the one he was talking about, and I knew what Adam was going to say before he said it.

  “Died at the scene. Damn shame. He had three kids. He was a good cop.” He checked his cell phone for messages. “I guess the lawyers will be all over it.”

  “I took some p
ictures of the accident.” I didn’t tell him I had seen his dead cop. What was the point? He’d only use it as another excuse to hassle me about coming to meetings.

  He said, “Ring the doorbell again.” He pointed at the Leica hanging around my neck. “Is that new? Looks expensive.”

  “It is.”

  “Where’d you get that kind of money?”

  “I got a good deal on it.”

  “Stolen?”

  “No, it isn’t stolen. You think I’d buy a hot camera?”

  “Just asking.”

  “Well don’t.”

  The door finally opened and we were greeted by an elderly gentleman, about five feet tall, with a thick wavy pompadour of ivory-white hair sweeping back from his tanned and botoxed forehead. He blinked his dark, almost-Chinese eyes slowly and smiled just with his lips. “May I help y’all?” he drawled.

  Adam gave a surprised little suck of air and said, “Jesus! You’re Cole Ritter!”

  “My reputation precedes me.” He wore a red silk smoking jacket, but his legs were naked, bandy as a flyweight boxer’s legs, deeply tanned and utterly hairless. His feet were bare, the trimmed nails shiny and healthy. He held a martini glass between the index and middle fingers of his bejeweled left hand.

  Adam turned to me. “Jesus, Jackie, this is Cole Ritter! Do you know who he is?”

  “Cole Ritter, I presume.”

  “On the button,” Cole said.

  Adam grabbed his hand and shook it, almost upsetting his martini. “I’ve loved your work since I Can’t Remember When!”

  “Much obliged, I’m sure.” Cole gradually extracted his hand from Adam’s fist. He took a sip of his martini and glanced at me.

  “I was a theater major in college,” Adam said. “My senior year, I played Sonny in Forrest Park.”

  “Ah yes,” Cole smiled at me. “I wrote that play when I was in high school.”

  “That’s what’s so incredible about it! Such maturity of style, such depth of characterization! Jackie, do you have any idea who this man is?” Adam was giving a disgusting fanboy performance. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

  “I’ve heard of him,” I admitted.

  “High praise indeed,” Cole said.

  “He’s only like the American Edward Bond!”

  “Thank you ever so much for not calling me the American Tom Stoppard.” Cole smiled at me again. “I get that all the time, you know.”

  “But I rather liked Cahoot’s Macbeth,” I said.

  He snorted and nearly dropped his martini. “Dinner theater!”

  “Cole’s from Memphis,” Adam continued. “He went to East High School, and now he’s world-famous!”

  “Marvelous.” I turned on the Leica and looked at him in the viewscreen.

  Cole leaned against the doorframe, faux casual, posing as though in one of his own plays. “Do you know, I can hardly walk down the street in Paris without a dozen people stopping me, but in Memphis I can’t even get a table at Paulette’s.”

  “It must be tough being you,” I said.

  He shrugged. “Prophets are not without honor, except in their own country.”

  Adam took his notepad out of his pocket. “I had no idea you were in town.”

  “I try not to let the press know my whereabouts,” Cole said. He probably called the newspaper from the airport to let them know he had arrived. He took a sip of his martini and looked me up and down once, his eyes lingering momentarily over the camera in my hand; then he turned his moist gaze on Adam. “But I like to come home a couple of times a year just to catch up on the gossip. You’re obviously not here for the party, though I’m sure you’d be welcome.” His eyes never left Adam as he said this. “Are y’all from the newspaper?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Because I don’t sign autographs.”

  “I’m Detective Sergeant Adam McPeake.” The fanboy vanished, quick as that, and I wondered if he hadn’t been playing it up just to put this supercilious old pouf off his guard. “We’re here to see Mr. Mori.”

  “Oh my!” Cole drolly exclaimed, one hand quivering over his lips in mock surprise. “A policeman! I had no idea.”

  “This is Jackie Lyons.”

  “Michi-san’s little photographer?” His teeth were too perfect, a façade of gleaming white caps behind paper-thin lips. “It seems I’ve heard of you, too.”

  “Isn’t it marvelous how famous we all are?” I said.

  “Don’t you try to steal my lines.”

  “May we come in?” Adam asked.

  “Of course.” Cole stepped back and allowed the door to swing open. “Far be it from me to stand in the way of the police.”

  We entered and Cole closed the door behind us before continuing, “You’ll have to excuse Michi-san. He’s entertaining.” He took another sip of his martini. A hard driving techno-beat thumped through the ceiling. “I’ll see if I can drag him away from his guests. Y’all make yourselves comfortable in the parlor.” He pointed to a small, dark room just off the hall, then sauntered away in none too great a hurry.

  Adam wandered down the hall without removing his shoes. I stripped off my wet jacket and hung it on the hall tree, then kicked my shoes into the corner beside a wet pair of black high-top sneakers. The walls of the entry hall were grotesque, the trim and crown molding carved into phantasmagoric scenes of orgies between men and animals, the antique wallpaper dripping with scarlet and gold foil, every surface swirled and feathered and coraled. What the Romans called horror vacui—the fear of unadorned spaces.

  I found Adam standing thunderstruck just inside the parlor door, staring at a hideous clutter of Victorian furnishings and glass curios. Shelf after shelf lined the walls, Lenox and Baccarat figurines sharing space with glass porpoises and seagulls picked up on the Mississippi Riviera. They seemed chosen with absolutely no sense of taste or even apparent consciousness of value.

  “Nobody actually lives here, do they?” he asked.

  “It’s not all this bad. The kitchen’s OK. I haven’t seen the upstairs.” I plopped down on the antique settle.

  “I always thought my grandmother’s house was a creep show. She collected those realistic, life-size porcelain dolls. But this…” He ran a hand over the top of his smooth, shiny brown head. “Whoever put this together, there’s something not right with his head.”

  “I think all this belonged to his wife.” I wasn’t sure if it did, but sometimes when I visited I saw her sitting in here, polishing her nails. It seemed to be her room.

  “Michi was married?” He sat on a Casanova loveseat across from me.

  “He’s a widower.”

  We waited in silence, looking at the carpet. I was struck, as always, by the smell of Michi’s house. It smelled like money, piles of it, obscene wealth mixed with the spicy odor of ancient lacquer, damp bricks, musty fabric and desertous old carpets, grease and rot and dust and sex and death. Behind every great fortune there is a crime, somebody once said. It took me a minute to remember who.

  Balzac.

  The driving, thumping techno beat never let up the whole time we sat there. It reminded me of that Poe story, “The Fall of the House of Usher”—the ancient dying house rotting beneath the weight of the family’s sins, its dark and secret heart bump-bump-bumping to the natural rhythm of a good hard rogering. It occurred to me then, but not for the first time, that Adam and I had never done it, never even made out at a Christmas party. It was strange. Although he was my junior by several years, he was good-looking and certainly desirable enough, but every time I thought about him that way, it gave me the heebs, like wanting to kiss your brother. He’d never shown any interest in me, either, never hit on me, never gave me any vibes at all.

  “Sorry about tonight,” I said.

  He looked up from his wet brogans. “For what?”

  “For stepping on your toes with the whole Christopher Marlowe thing. I wanted to say I’m sorry. I just blurted it out.”

  “You saved my ass from a major rug
dance in front of the chief. Just imagine if some reporter had made the connection instead of you.” He was being very gracious, more gracious than I ever would have been in his position. Adam was the MPD’s expert on the Playhouse Killer. His theater major from Rhodes College had come in handy when all the criminal-justice graduates were scratching their asses for answers. That jumped him in front of a bunch of more experienced detectives on the investigation. If he could break this case, he’d make captain. He knew it, I knew it, everybody knew it. What was more, he looked good on camera, so they had him on This Morning Memphis now and then to talk about the case, and after the last victim, they’d done a cover story on Adam in the Memphis Flyer. There was talk of a national news television show doing a special with him. They were hoping to get a Playhouse Killer episode, but our boy never obliged their shooting schedule.

  “You’re a better person than me,” I said as I stood up. I couldn’t sit still.

  “We already knew that.”

  I was no longer a passive observer in this investigation. I was part of it now—a witness. For the last four years I had been photographing the Playhouse Killer’s crime scenes. I had photographed his first victim before we knew we had a serial killer. Adam got me the gig when I was literally as low as I could get, and he’d broken any number of rules—personal and professional—to do it. At the time, I hadn’t worked in months and was almost to the point of hooking for dope money. He got my Canon out of hock at the pawn shop. I still hadn’t paid him back for that, four years later. He’d never asked. One more person I owed, one more person I could never repay.

  4

  ALMOST FIVE HOURS EARLIER, I had pulled up to the curb in front of Michi-san’s house and parked under the same dripping sycamore trees. I had known Michi for nearly fifteen years and had been mooching money off him for the last three. If it hadn’t been for Michi’s generous employment, I don’t know if I’d still be around to pollute the earth. He was a sugar daddy who demanded no sugar, daddy to dozens of human derelicts just like me. He had given me the money for the Leica in the first place, but that was before I had been obliged to pay first and last month’s rent on a new apartment. I needed more money and I knew just how to get it. So I was a leech, but I had learned a long time ago how to live with that.