by Rawlyns, Nya
Tom still lifted an eyebrow.
“The one in the tub, Svetlana?” Tom was the one who’d okayed me getting up close and personal with the bizarre crime scene. “She was into kink, big time. I figured I’d find out more if I hung out at one of her play stations.”
“Haven.” He said it with some distaste. Apparently he was familiar with the entertainment options.
The man was a straight-up, God-fearing, missionary style, by-the-book kind of fellow. How he’d lasted as long as he had, tip-toeing between homicide and vice, was a mystery to me. If he knew how far down the rabbit hole I’d gone, I doubt we’d be speaking right now.
At least not like this. Not like almost friends. Colleagues even.
He was all about benefit of the doubt and the load of bull I fed him tweaked my conscience, but not enough to keep me up nights. I had other concerns that took care of zombifying my life.
“So you meet her by chance,” meaning blondie with the fishnet blouse and nipple rings and hot sweet cunt.
“Yeah, she parked it next to me. I bought her a few rounds, asked questions. Who she usually saw in there. If she knew Svetlana, usual stuff.”
I held up my glass and Tom nodded. Shuffling to the kitchen and pouring another round, a very generous amount for both of us, gave me a few minutes to think.
Unfortunately that delaying tactic allowed Tom to add a few more numbers in his head. “She was underage, did you know that?”
I handed him the glass and shrugged. I’d known that and conveniently overlooked it, but I felt the need to explain, “She was deep into the Goth thing, knew what she was doing. I figured a year or two didn’t make much difference. It was either me or somebody else.” I took a swallow, embracing the lie, and said, “It turned out she knew squat,” praying he’d drop it.
He didn’t.
“So you… what? Danced?”
“Yeah, a little. Not my thing.”
“Not what the bartender said.”
Shit.
Tom pressed on. “Then what?”
“I decided to leave.”
“With the girl?”
I really wished he’d stop calling her a girl. “No. I went out the VIP section, through the back hallway.”
“Witnesses said you followed her out.”
Witnesses. That did not sound good. I had to think fast and two double shots of bourbon weren’t greasing those gears in a helpful way.
Acting like I didn’t care, like it was no big deal, I said, “Well, yeah. But she took off for the ladies and I kept on going,” not masking the surly tone.
Wait for it. The damn-me-to-hell question was thick on his tongue.
The bartender had to have mentioned the tall Vamp chick fucking my ass with her crotch and thighs. And following me out in our little parade toward the alley.
He could ask or I could volunteer.
Volunteer it was.
“There was a tall chick, late twenties, maybe older. Black hair, leather. Never got a good look. Might have bought her a drink. Might not. I honestly don’t remember.”
He finished the last gulp of liquor and asked, “Why’s that?”
Sick of the twenty questions crap, I spit out, “I was more than halfway wasted, all right? I needed air. And a decent night’s sleep. I left. End of discussion.”
I wondered if he knew I’d been at the crime scene in the morning. I doubted it. No one seemed awake enough to take notice of me. I’d done a hit and run, just seeing enough to convince me I’d been right about the Vamp chick. And what my mental lapse about what happened next might mean.
No matter how hard I tried to pull the pieces together, there were still too many gaps in my memories.
Tom looked like he’d run out of steam. I got up and found a couple clean sheets and a pillow and threw them on the couch.
Pointing to the bathroom, I said, “There’s spare everything under the sink.” I held up a hand and smiled. “Not my doing. Thank momma Annie.”
Tom lifted himself off the chair with difficulty and sway-walked to the bathroom. Before he shut the door he said in a low voice, “It wouldn’t have been statutory rape.”
“Wha—”
“The girl. She was a month shy of twenty.”
He shut the door and I stood rooted to the ancient carpet, clenching and unclenching my fists, listening to the toilet flush and then the water running in the sink. I imagined it circling down the drain, just like what was left of my moral code, if I’d ever had one.
I thought, Fuck me.
It seemed appropriate.
CHAPTER FIVE
Midtown Down
“Micah? Micah, wake up.”
Something… someone pinched my shoulder. I wasn’t interested.
“I hafta go…” The voice petered out, then came back strong. “It’s one of yours.”
Yeah, yeah, on my way.
No, I’m not at home.
Friend’s…
How long…
No, not Terrence. I want Chen. She’s been…
I lay straddling the bed diagonally, fully dressed, face planted in a pillow, listening. Dull ambient light shone through the bedroom window, neither light nor dark, just… a presence. The digital alarm clock cast a greenish glow behind me, not that I could see it. Not that I wanted to.
I’d gone into the goodnight without an argument for once, and whatever passed for sleep had been dreamless, and a blessing I didn’t deserve.
“Micah, did you hear what I said?”
Yeah, I did.
“She had one of your cards on her.”
Shit.
Now I was awake, sucker-punched into awareness.
“What time is it?” Like that mattered.
I rolled off the bed and nearly went down, the vertigo drilling me hard, driving bile in a gush up the back of my throat. I made it to the bathroom but it was a close call.
“You okay?” O’Hearn wasn’t asking out of concern. He wanted answers, and my state of disarray was seriously cutting into his patience zone.
“Yeah, fine.” I wasn’t and had no idea where that was coming from.
All I could think was… Sasha. Sasha with the long legs and soft little girl voice, staring up at me with baby blues so sweet I’d about melted. Even now my cock hardened, remembering leaning in, imagined tasting those ripe lips, making a promise to help.
“Damn it.”
“What?” O’Hearn was shrugging into his shoulder holster, fumbling with the ammo carrier. He was a lefty.
“Nothing.”
My rig still lay on the small end table by the hallway. The tee-shirt I’d slept in was sticky with sweat. The leather straps ground the wet into my skin as I slid it over my shoulders. It’d been a Walmart special but the Sig P239 nine liked it just fine and the swivel plate in the back made adjustment easy most days. This wasn’t going to be one of them.
“Where do you think you’re going?”
“With you.”
He didn’t argue and that told me volumes. We took the stairs two at a time and rolled out the door onto a street oddly quiet; but a few lights winked on, upper floors, as solid citizens tumbled out of bed to tackle the beginning of another work week.
O’Hearn’s piece ’o shit ride was parked out front of my building. How he’d managed that was a miracle. He chirped it open and I slid into the passenger seat. Fingering the dash-mounted strobes, he weighed in on being annoying or running silent. It was unlikely we’d hit much traffic this early in the morning. He made the right choice for which I was grateful. I wasn’t awake enough for the drama.
I still didn’t know the time. Not that it mattered but curiosity got the better of me so I glanced at the display. Four seventeen in the fricking a.m.
He pulled out without looking and headed us uptown. I had a rough idea where we’d be going. Most of the street action centered on midtown east, though with the advent of the internet a lot of the higher-end girls booked early and conveniently from the comfort of a pimp
-provided boudoir.
Not ‘my girls’ though.
The first two had been deposited around the usual locations, between fortieth and fifty-ninth. The last one, the one in the tub, had been discovered in a fairly upscale boutique hotel a few blocks north.
That was the one I’d seen… and wished now I hadn’t. It’s one thing to look at a body on a slab, listen to Chen chatter on about lividity, watch her point a blunt, blue latexed finger at puncture wounds in the neck… and quite another to stare at a body still cooling down. What bothered me was the lack of mess—a few streaks of blood on the tiled wall, a bit about the vic’s mouth, like a mannequin in quiet repose. There was nothing ritualistic about it.
That was the thing… it’d been utilitarian. Like a meal you consume without thinking on it much. Eat ’til you’re full, and then discard the rest, just shoving the plate aside for someone else to deal with the remains. Like… garbage.
And that’s what pinged my sub-conscious. Mythology. The vamp subs valued the bites, evidence of favor and commitment, wearing the wounds like a badge of honor. Like Svetlana had done.
Trina.
Trina had scoffed. No, more than scoffed. She’d been pissed, in a way that made no sense to me.
Why?
Twice… twice that I could remember clear as day, Trina and the tall stranger at Haven had sucked me into world class orgasms, taking deep pulls off my vein, shutting down all feeling except the heat pulsing in my neck…
With a fist braced against the cord in my neck I turned and rested my head against the cool glass, eyes blind to all but an inner vision, a memory playing out behind a veil, leaving me with indistinct images. And a desire so thick I could taste it in the back of my throat.
Micah, she’d crooned in that breathless voice, mesmerizing me. Let me help.
No… no it was, I vant for you to do this, I vill help…
And the talon pricked the vein, her vein, and she’d teased me with a taste, the first among many… it had to be. More than once, the bouquet, the fulsomeness of the thick honeyed scent like a tidal wave of pleasure, then pain… my body erupting, revolting, reviling my choices and my lust.
She’d marked me as hers, leaving only psychic wounds to nourish my vanity, all traces of our passion removed with a flick of her tongue, her spittle on my thumb rubbing gently on her swan-like neck.
It was her way… their way. The poseurs, the faux fang bangers, never went far enough, could never, ever get it right.
The hookers all had visible, unaltered puncture wounds. Left alone it would have taken forever for each of them to bleed out. No, they’d been suctioned dry.
Like the four hookers in New Orleans. Except that the blonde Goth girl hadn’t been a hooker, of that I was sure. A misguided kid maybe, acting out… much like me at age nineteen. Wanting to be a part of something bigger, more dangerous, more alive. Wanting to throw off the tedium of growing up under a belt, and later fists, until the reason I stayed took refuge and freed me to leave.
While I traipsed down memory lane, O’Hearn and cop central kept up a running commentary. We were on Second Avenue bisecting Stuyvesant. The Medical Examiner’s office was off Thirtieth and First. I still didn’t know exactly where we were going, then Tom mumbled something about St. Vartan’s Park, and it took all I had to hide my sigh of relief. That was not Sasha’s turf.
I asked, “Did they find the body in the park?” He nodded, keeping his eyes peeled for cross traffic as we hurtled through a yellow. “Which end?” If my guess was right, it would make a big difference.
“West end, near the benches.” He swung right on 34th, the one ways forcing him to loop around the Cathedral and come up on the park from the south side. Before I could question him further, Tom said, “Guy walking his dog around three a.m. found her. 911’d it in.”
We angle parked by the black and whites and got out. O’Hearn flashed his credentials to a female officer. We followed her into the park.
The Parks Department and FDR Drive buttressing the East River were the only things blocking the skyline. Dawn lightened the heavens, leaving us with enough ambient light to see the body and surrounds without need for floods.
The body—the carcass—lay braced in the crook of a wrought iron bench seat. Another bench sat at ninety degrees to it. Both nestled in a quiet copse of trees, relatively isolated from the playgrounds and tables set out for the lunch time crowds. During the day, kids with trykes and moms with baby carriages would rule in manicured splendor. The place was upscale and safe. Mostly. As shifting as the red light district was, St. Vartan’s wasn’t known for being a hot-spot for pick-ups.
“Do you know her?”
Did I? I wasn’t sure. I crouched down to get a better look. She was vaguely familiar, the same high forehead and full, pouty lips, brows darkly arched over almond-shaped eyes. Eyes staring sightless, filled with terror. Still.
I’d interviewed at least a dozen working girls, all either Ukranian, Russian or Armenian. And most with ties to the BDSM and Goth subcultures. The odds were good I’d talked to one of her friends, if not to her directly. And, yes, I’d passed out business cards, instructing them to call if they remembered anything, saw something suspicious.
O’Hearn had his cop face on, eyes hard, sharp, watching me with interest. He cocked an eyebrow, ready to press for answers.
I offered, “I think I know why she’s here,” meaning ‘not somewhere else’, away from her usual haunts.
I got up with an effort, my belly growling. Neither of us had had anything to eat or drink. I wanted coffee even more than I wanted answers.
O’Hearn must have read my mind. He sent one of the uniforms off to find us sustenance while I paced in a small circle, thinking hard over what I knew.
Chen approached, so we backed off to let her do her job. She’d confirm later what we already knew.
O’Hearn took my elbow and led me away from the crowd and said, his voice sharp, “Talk to me.”
Running a hand through my unruly mop, I said, “You saw what was on the counter,” reminding him of the summary sheet I’d made for the incidents in New Orleans nearly a year ago. “Four hookers. All drained. Just like this. Three blacks, one white. Two from the same stable, one probably a runaway and the other… who knows.”
Tom said, “This one is number five. You said you knew why she’s here,” he waved a hand to indicate the park, but I shook my head and motioned him to be quiet while I thought it through.
He was cop patient, giving me what I needed: breathing space.
Finally I said, “I went to Brighton Beach on Saturday afternoon. Interviewed the friend of the third vic, Svetlana. The first three, I’d done my poking at night, canvassing street corners, not trying to pretend to solicit, just doing straight up twenty-questions.”
What I didn’t mention was the conviction that I’d picked up a tail in Brighton Beach. It put a different spin on the evening, and the next victim.
“You still haven’t…”
We were standing at the intersection of 35th and the Queens Midtown Tunnel entrance street. The dome of St. Vartan’s Cathedral loomed like a sentinel in front of us and to our left.
“Most of the working girls I saw were Eastern Block. I suspect this one was in the Cathedral, praying, whatever…” That made sense so he didn’t interrupt. “I think your girl there,” pointing back to a now empty bench, “…that one is number four.”
I explained that tonight’s draining was consistent with the pattern established elsewhere—an available supply of women ready and willing to get into cars with strange men or to follow them into hotel rooms. A simple case of opportunism, with victims society cared little about and service providers easily replaced with the next wave of illegal immigrants. And while I couldn’t rule out some extremist religious fanatic targeting women of the night, the simple fact that the mode of death sat solidly in a weirdo land of the paranormal argued against such a simplistic theory.
Tom picked up the pacing
routine, running the numbers. He had no argument with my assessment and said so. Then he asked the question that had my gut in a knot. “What’s that make the Haven victim?”
“A message.”
“For who?”
Unfortunately, I knew the answer to that. Figuring out why was going to be more challenging. Those gaps in my memory could come back to haunt me, big time.
The uniform on coffee duty finally returned with extra-large sludge. It tasted like toxic waste but beggars couldn’t be choosers. We did a mutual grimace and sipped the scalding brews.
The party wound down slowly. The ambulance had carted the body off and Chen was on her way to the office. She’d give this one priority, if for no other reason than her curiosity was piqued. One incident might be an anomaly, two was unfortunate, but four was pushing her limits of credibility. We both hoped five was the last straw number.
It was hard, damn hard, to focus on who, when the how was giving all of us heebie-jeebies.
Tom asked, “How much blood’s in a human body?”
“Five, maybe six quarts, dunno exactly. Why?”
He didn’t respond but it wasn’t hard to figure where he was going with that.
The first pull had been… odd. Intoxicating in its essence, warm silky stickiness coating my throat and esophagus. The second swelled my cock, hardening it like a rock until every nerve balanced between the suckling at my mouth and the violent thrusting of my hips, driving deep, deeper. When the shock wave hit it’d been the highest of highs, waves of pleasure coiling me inside out. What followed was a cataclysm of vomiting, retching up brownish red bile until I thought… I wanted to die.
And then do it all again, and again, and again.
My tolerance increased gradually. A cup, maybe two. But a quart, two, five? No way. Not for a human.
Not for a… human.
Turning to stare at the now empty bench, O’Hearn put his hands on his hips, shoulders tense, adding it up. He had to be wondering if more than one perp was involved, given the mechanics, and the evidence, facing him.
