He unzipped the top pocket of his backpack and took out what he needed. If Zarah heard the rustle of cord as the ball hit the floor, she wasn’t quick enough. Arms and torso already bound to the chair, there was barely a scream out of her open mouth before it was silenced with a strip of packing tape. Two legs thrashed under the desk, but only for a moment.
Gabriel saw the frown, read the expression on her face and twisted the chair around to face him. “That doggie door’s way too big. The wood’s as rotten as your heart. May I?”
He sat on a blue floral easy chair and smiled. “You’re probably wondering where we’ve met before.”
Zarah blinked a couple of times, chin sinking to her chest. Her head was inclined slightly, ear pressed against one shoulder.
“Remember the time you won Miss Coronado?” He emphasized the word with two index fingers. “It was raining... hailstones, I think. Pinged off the cars and made dents in the paintwork. You were so happy. You and your crown, and your long mermaid dress all covered in sparkles. I complimented you, said you were beautiful. Only, you said I was stick thin. No, wait... you said I was a scraggy pile of bones. Then you threw pizza at me. You and all of them.”
Gabriel saw the hint of recognition and then it was gone behind narrowed eyes. “I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, it can’t be. Didn’t think I could look like this.”
Zarah shook her head. It was all she could manage.
“I should be dead by now.” Gabriel dredged up that same nudge of pain from somewhere deep inside and his eyes began to water. “Do you know what it’s like to be laughed at... hated for something you can’t help? Do you?”
Zarah shook her head again, eyes glistening. There was a look on her face that scared Gabriel for a second. At first he thought it was terror, and then he realized what it was. Resignation. Zarah Thai knew she was going to die.
“Asha’s already dead. And buried,” Gabriel whispered, watching a pair of eyes that darted back and forth. Maybe Zarah was looking for a weapon, wondering how it would end. “She didn’t suffer. Died with all the dignity of a concert pianist, only without a couple of fingers. Can’t have her playing up there when I die. Drive me nuts.”
Gabriel finished off a glass of wine that had been sitting on the coffee table and poured himself another.
“The way I see it is this. Each time I rid this town of a demon, I get a little credit. And you are a demon with your cold, cruel heart and your fake smile. I know what you did out there in the parking lot. Oh, it was just a quick fondle, nothing to worry about. As long as Alice Delgado didn’t find out. As long as she didn’t know how many of you had the hots for her boyfriend.”
The coughing started then, the panting, the puckered face. “Not so pretty now, are you Zarah? If you really want to know I cancelled your order and brought something better. Homemade with a dash of rat poison. And you’re so careful with your food. Stomach’s probably lost its lining from all that throwing up to stay thin. It won’t take long, a few seizures... I mean, you’ve got to die of something. Might as well die like a rat.” Gabriel leaned forward a little. “Think I’m joking, don’t you?”
That seemed to make Zarah whimper and fret, tears leaving glossy trails down her cheeks. She couldn’t scream, couldn’t run, just sat there jerking for a time until her eyes became glazed and her head rolled forward. As the minutes turned to hours, the coughing behind the tape grew still and so did her body.
Unless she was faking it.
Gabriel poked her a few times. Definitely out cold. “Probably regretting the day you spat on me. Said I was evil... I’ll show you evil.”
Gabriel left her there, didn’t want to lose the last traces of a such a memory, the scents, the sounds, the flavor. It was all in his mind, all in his past, and he refused to leave it all behind.
The bedroom barely had room for a queen-sized bed and on the dressing table was a large tub of moisturizer. He opened the lid, poked a gloved finger in the center and scooped enough cream to smear all over his face. Then he carved another name in the kitchen door frame, one inch below the hinge.
Estheri.
He climbed out the same way he had climbed in; the dog flap was large enough for a slender man. Peering through the garden gate at the road, he saw the cop on the phone eyeing the front of the house with a yawn.
Probably thought everything was OK, like the pizza delivery van that had eased up to the curb a few hours ago and left a tasty treat on the doorstep.
Gabriel kept to the back of the house, scaled a block wall and dropped into next door’s yard. He counted four more yards until he found the main road and that faithful old van. It was getting harder to start now, barely turning over in the cold weather. On the way home, he thought he saw a little Honda Accord in the rearview mirror, but all white cars looked the same and who in New Mexico didn’t favor a white car to keep the sun off?
There was a puddle of oil on the narrow lane where he always parked. The van might not start at all tomorrow, he thought, feeling a twinge of grief in his gut. Might not live to see another sunrise.
He walked through the cornfield to the back of the house, unlocked the door and took a deep breath. He peeled off his clothes in the kitchen, rammed them into a trash bag and stood naked in front of the mirror. Gray skin shimmered under the fluorescent lighting, belly speckled with sweat. He was uglier than he had ever been.
“I am evil,” he reminded himself as he peeled off the wig. “I am dead.”
He would have turned away then, only today he stared at that reflection, repulsed by what he saw. Filthy. Dirty. Rags.
Gabriel had seen it in a dream. The growth, a tumor, an ugly sore getting bigger and bigger, fusing to bone and brain, a gradual death from the burden of his pain. He almost laughed because he imagined he had put it there himself.
Then he cried, because he knew he had.
The name of the growth was Demon. Everyone had one. Some came and went, some just got bigger and bigger. And then there were those who took their own lives before that growth ever had a chance to reveal itself.
He stared at his body one last time, knew what changes had to be made, what colors he would choose. He’d had enough of being held captive in a prison he didn’t want, praying for harmony that never came. Sometimes it was better to be what God made you than changing it all for the sake of perfection. Or, in his case, for the sake of shame.
Why aren’t you like her? Not even an atom of likeness. You did it, didn’t you? It had to be you. Shame... shame... shame.
The memories. The whip. He could imagine it high over his head now, the long gray tail falling... falling. He tried to call out. “No... please!” But the whip struck him on the back and the pain made him gasp.
Those marks were still there, all the way down the back of his legs if he cared to look. They were there all those years ago when he was undressing at school. Gabriel had no idea what to say, how to tell all those enquiring mouths that life had been hell.
He was struck by the one dizzying notion that the only person he had ever trusted had been himself. And when himself was gone, there would be no one.
“There is a way,” Demon murmured.
Gabriel took shallow breaths of warm air as he stood under the shower, scrubbed his body and head until they were both raw. Watched trails of muddy water slinking toward the drain like a trickle of tree roots.
He remembered the detective’s face, the clenched jaw, the evasive black eyes. He was observant and cautious, and yet there was a profound calm about him Gabriel rather liked. A handsome man, shrugging on a coat over solid shoulders and arms corded with muscle. Gabriel had seen stronger men, but nothing quite like this.
He toweled himself dry, wiped a fist over a cloudy mirror and paused half a second. The face was the one he remembered, pink skin and eyes whiter in the corners than a fried egg.
He propped open the door with a small antique iron, watched the steam as it drifted toward the kitchen, felt the chilled air
against his naked flesh.
He was excited, longing to make that call. Not just for the Smarts, but because he knew the dealer wanted to get high together.
On the mattress were jeans, shirt, boots and a brown leather belt with a single pronged buckle engraved with the first letter of his name; a memorable detail. Athletic, clean-cut, sparkling... no sense in calling too much attention to himself.
He smiled in his in-between world, marveling at how his brain had suddenly re-wired itself, how it enhanced the senses he had. He inhaled slightly, refocused his mind on the sudden stir of air under his nose, and listened.
TWENTY-SIX
Malin leaned back in the chair of her second floor office. The sky was black and her eyes were locked in the glare of two area lights in the parking lot. Stars blinked through the skeletal limbs of a sycamore and the moon shone down on a row of black and white units. She was waiting for Maggie Watts to call.
Turning her mind to Paddy Brody, she replayed the mental video recording in her head, brooded over it as if there was something she must have missed. His tone had been impossible to read and that made her tense. When she’d asked him if Lily Delgado was dead he simply replied, she is to me. There had been no edge to his voice, no reason to suspect he knew anything about her disappearance. Just four simple words.
There’s always more to a killer than meets the eye, she thought. Some worked for an employer, some were gang related, most were thugs and only a few were independently contracted. This one targeted young, healthy females between the ages of twenty-one and twenty-three, no physical commonalities and each murder more elaborate than a bullet to the head. She wondered if it boiled down to timing since these deaths galloped ahead without restraint, as if there was significant ground the killer had to cover.
There was more than a thin thread that connected them, more than just a high school group of friends. A cult, money, and one shared lover. Comparisons and statistics on a case like this were slim to none and she hadn’t a hope in hell of building an accurate profile if none of these deaths were related.
There was a more frightening category of killer; a loner. They weren’t paid by an employer to kill, weren’t expecting to collect insurance. The act wasn’t spontaneous ‒ an idea dredged out of a confused mind ‒ it just didn’t compute. But each victim had been put in a vulnerable situation, they were alone at the time of death.
This left another possibility. Revenge.
Malin paused to think about that for a moment, jumping to the natural conclusion that it was a love relationship gone bad and as for timing, it might have had something to do with the killer’s cover being compromised.
She rubbed her eyes and peered at the computer screen. Asha Samadi had been reported missing sixteen days ago and according to the amount of blood found on the carpet, was regrettably dead. The papers said Kenzie Voorhees was found without vital signs and pronounced dead at the scene of an hellacious south side gas blast. The house had been leveled and debris scattered over hundreds of yards, some of it hanging on trees and neighboring houses. And then there was Rosa Belmonte, drowned in the Rio Grande river in her car.
Paddy was a solid witness – and let’s face it, intimacy with more than one woman could make a man some interesting enemies. She wondered if Wingman could offer any clues. He was on vacation, so he said, only all sociable souls could text and his had gone eerily quiet.
Sixteen minutes past ten on Saturday night and Malin checked her phone. One private message. One text. She listened to the message first, wondering why she hadn’t heard the phone ring.
It’s Paddy. You asked me to call you if I thought of anything. Gray hoodie. Very transparent. I thought I’d seen him before.
Malin felt a wave of disgust, listened to thin air for a second before calling him back. No answer.
She scanned Maggie’s text. A simple ‘can you bring me some coffee?’ Time to relieve her from a night of surveillance outside Paddy’s house.
Malin switched off the computer, shrugged on her coat and padded downstairs. Sergeant Moran was reading a copy of Time Magazine and sipping a can of Coke. One of the graveyard shift officers was playing a game of solitaire on his computer; the lenses of his glasses recklessly mirroring a deck of cards.
She tried to slip past Sarge without saying hello, but his eyes were quicker than a snake.
“Being cordial is not just for cherries,” he muttered.
“I’m going to meet Maggie, Sarge.”
“She said she’s freezing her butt off out there.”
“She called you?” Malin saw him nod. “Tell her I’m on my way.”
Malin raised one hand, uttered a tired goodbye and fled through the front door. It was Sunday tomorrow and the thought of a peaceful day gave her a little more energy. She headed for the twenty-four hour BadA$$ coffee stop on Fourth and Alameda, bought two cups of dark roast and a couple of blueberry muffins at the drive-thru.
Watercress Drive was a quiet neighborhood off Jefferson, looping around into Goldenthread Drive where four handy exits brought you back to Alameda. She pulled up by the curb about twenty-five yards down from Maggie’s truck, couldn’t see Paddy’s residence since it was too far up the street and partially covered by a box hedge.
But Maggie could, and with a good pair of binoculars she could probably see as far as the clock on the mantel if he had one.
Malin’s phone vibrated, felt the warning before she heard Maggie’s voice. “Done some checking. He has a roommate, Burmese guy called Maun Tung. Got his phone number if you need it. Paddy was looking out of the window about twenty minutes ago.”
“Any interest in your truck?”
“Nope. There are two others on the other side of the street, same color, same model.”
It wouldn’t have made any difference, Malin thought. If Paddy was alert, knew all the cars in his street, he would sense a variation in traffic. “Bought you some coffee.”
“I’ll be darned...” Maggie said slowly. “Subject’s opening the garage door. Most activity I’ve seen all evening.”
“What’s he wearing?”
“Black jacket, khaki pants. Putting a gym bag in the trunk.”
“How big’s that gym bag?”
“Weekend sized. About twenty-one inches.”
“Bit late to be traveling,” Malin murmured.
“Might be meeting someone.”
“What sort of meeting would make a man leave his house at ten thirty at night?”
“A sick relative... a girlfriend. He’s on his way. Shall I follow him?”
“I’ll go,” Malin said, and ended the call.
The smell of coffee and muffins reminded her Maggie would have to do without. Passing food across to another undercover squad car was as foolish as following a suspected killer.
She rubbed her forehead, felt a sudden ache creeping up the small of her back and settling into the base of her neck. She lowered her jaw to relieve the pain, pulled out into the middle of the street and nodded at Maggie on her way past.
Malin hung back as the white Honda Accord backed down the driveway and out into the street. She wasn’t close enough to blind his vision in the rearview mirror with her headlights and, staring at a mud spattered back window, realized he likely couldn’t see her at all. Her fingers began to tingle against the steering wheel as she kept about a hundred yards behind.
He turned west all the way to Camino Vega Verde and just before the turn off she decided it was time to get closer. He didn’t drive to the Delgado House on Bazan Loop, but turned left at the fork and stopped before a white house with plantation shutters and palm trees which towered above an acre of lush grounds on the west side of the street.
Malin chose the right turn, drove anticlockwise around the loop until she was about thirty feet in front of him, pulled over to the curb and parked under a weeping willow with the headlights off. She slumped down in her seat and studied him, the direction of his eyes, the slant of his body, the general demeanor.
Malin checked her weapon and swung the driver’s door open without taking her eyes off the white car. She stepped out into the darkness, locked the door from the inside, heard a faint click.
She blinked a few times to ward off a bitter breeze that swung from the northwest and sent a skitter of leaves along the same path Paddy had taken. A few stars twinkled overhead and the street lights gave off a pinky-yellow blush.
Narrowing her eyes, she peered around the corner of the block wall, advancing slowly at first before breaking into a jog. She was looking at every shadow, every clump of grass that led toward a faint rumble of traffic, stopping to catch her breath at the edge of a wide dirt track. Beyond it lay an arroyo and an empty parking lot that bordered Corrales Road, and to the right, a sandy track that meandered to the north.
There were no footprints, no sign of movement, and she closed her eyes for a moment to listen to the echo of silence and the emptiness in her head. Then voices drifted from a clump of cottonwoods behind the Café and to the left of where she was standing. Although she couldn’t make out the words, it was a male and female arguing.
She passed silently under overhanging tree limbs, jogging over a wooden bridge that led to the floodlit restaurant patio. As the voices grew louder, she saw a man standing beside a table, head down and face illuminated by the glowing blue rectangle of his cell phone.
Pausing at the foot of a large tree, she held her breath for a few seconds and peered through the branches.
“I don’t see any messages,” he said. “When did you call?”
“This morning.” Her voice was shrill with a whine to it.
A scraping sound as he drew a chair out from under a metal table, set the bag down between them. “Did anyone see you leave?”
Past Rites Page 14
