by Jeff Gelb
He turned off the Thumbnail and let his mind wander; he was a bit jet-lagged, although he didn’t want to admit it, and it was pleasant not to have to concentrate on his work. He blinked and glanced at the television, where the screen was filled with milling crowds in Chinese clothing in front of two large buildings going up in flames; a skittish reporter stood at the edge of it all, trying to describe what was happening behind him.
Bright got up and found the leather-bound room-service menu, turning to the central page for the most utilitarian listing of available food. As he had found in other Faversham hotels, this one had an eclectic offering for hungry travelers. He selected the spring rolls, the endive salad, the sturgeon in pastry, and the grilled eggplant accompanied by a half-carafe of five-year-old Côtes du Rhône. As soon as he called this in, he decided he had time for a quick bath—Miss Faversham had never had a shower installed in her bathroom, not in any of her hotels—and loosened his tie while he programmed his watch to buzz in twenty minutes, time enough to bathe and be out of the tub by the time his meal arrived.
This bathroom was a wonderland of pink marble, tall mirrors, golden fixtures, and an elevated tub of lavish size. After turning the gold-plated spigots to fill the tub, Bright hung his garments on the silent butler, then opened the closet to remove one of the Turkish cotton robes he knew would be hanging in it. He set this on the seat of the silent butler, stepped out of his shoes, and bent to remove his socks, then stopped as he felt another draft slither through the room. He stood still for a moment, a sock in his hand, waiting for something to happen. Surely the door hadn’t opened again. When nothing more occurred, he removed his second sock and went to the bathtub, tested the water with his hand, and, satisfied with the heat, climbed into the hot water, reaching for the nearest packet of soap as he did. He knew it would smell of lavender and violet—all soaps in Miss Faversham’s room had that aroma—but he did his best to ignore it. The bath was polished marble, five feet long with sloping sides that made it easy for the six-foot Bright to recline without sinking. He sighed and closed his eyes for a couple of minutes before reaching for the large, natural sponge set in the basket-shaped soap dish at the side of the tub and set to lathering it up. Little as he wanted to admit it, his thirty-nine-year-old body was beginning to feel the wear and tear of a life spent traveling. He made a point of massaging the tightened muscles in the backs of his calves and his shoulders.
Emerging from the bath just before his watch hummed, he toweled himself lightly, shivering a little in another unexpected breeze, then shrugged into the luxurious Turkish bathrobe, tied the belt, and wandered out into the sitting room to fetch his bags. He was just unzipping the large duffle when the rap on the door announced the arrival of his meal. He found six Euros tucked into the pages of a book he had been reading on the plane, then went to admit the waiter with his rolling tray.
“Just put it in front of the sofa,” Bright requested, pointing. “Move the butler’s table if you have to.”
The waiter complied without having to move the butler’s table, accepted his tip, and left the room in less than a minute.
Bright wandered back and sat down, lifting the covers off the dishes and inhaling deeply. He set aside the lid from the spring rolls—three of them, laid on a bed of shredded cabbage; a small serving of sweet-and-sour sauce, and another of hoisin sauce accompanied the appetizers, which he ate with his fingers, licking the sauce off his hands when he was through, feeling a bit gauche but enjoying himself. Then he picked up his salad fork and began on the endive leaf by leaf, each of the five leaves bearing a dollop of sour cream topped with caviar. “To think Miss Faversham dined like this every day of her adult life,” said Bright to the room as he finished the salad and gave his attention to the sturgeon, watching the pastry flake as his fork went through it.
A sudden ringing of the phone jarred Bright so much that he almost dropped his fork. He frowned as he reached out to pick up the receiver, wondering who might be calling him. “Harold Bright.”
“Harry,” boomed Jeremy Snow, the managing editor of World Traveler magazine. “How was the flight from Buenos Aires? How’s Brussels?”
“Pleasant; it’s supposed to drizzle tonight, but just now it’s cloudy,” Bright answered, glancing toward the window, where the light had turned a tarnished silver color as the day wound toward its close. “The flight was uneventful. But you’re not calling about the weather, or my traveling. What can I do for you?”
Snow laughed aloud. “There you go—business first, last, and always.”
“That’s what you pay me for,” said Bright, putting his fork down and reaching for his napkin.
“Truth, truth,” said Snow. “Okay, here it is: we need you to stay on for an extra day. We’ll get your new plane tickets before nine tomorrow, but it’s important that you attend the semi-annual Faversham’s executives’ luncheon on Thursday. They’re supposed to be discussing two new hotels planned. I want to be the magazine to break the news about where and what theme these new Favershams will have.”
“Okay.” Bright looked around for a pen. “What time and where?”
“At the Empire House, of course. I’ll e-mail the pertinent information before I go home this evening; make sure you log on to get it, and use tomorrow to prepare for the meeting. Make sure you go over it before the meeting. I’ve cleared it with dePuy, who’ll be expecting you.” Snow chuckled. “Remind me to tell you how I finessed the invite.”
“Yes, please,” said Bright because it was expected of him.
“So you make sure you make the most of it. I want to know where those two new hotels are going to be. My bet’s on Cairo for one, maybe Mexico City for the other. I know the New York hotel is still on hold.” He made it sound as if he didn’t want to be wrong. “I’ll want details, of course, and schedules.”
“I’ll make sure to talk to dePuy,” said Bright.
“And get as much information as you can out of the rest of the executives. They all probably have plans and projects we’ll want to put in the story.” He paused. “I’m upping your article to 18,000 words. I’ll push it as high as 20,000 if you get an extra scoop.”
“That’s great,” said Bright, contemplating the prospect of filling eighty pages with enthusiastic puffery.
“I want you to call me after the meeting. Right after. No half-hour delays. Use your cell phone—why else do we pay for international connections? I’ll be waiting.” Snow didn’t wait for a response but hung up without farewell.
Bright looked at the receiver in his hands and shook his head slowly before putting it back on the cradle. “Thanks,” he muttered, returning to his meal with mixed annoyance and fatigue. The food had lost most of its savor, but Bright knew that was because of the pall of tension that had come over him, not anything in the meal itself. Three bites of the sturgeon in pastry, and he was done. He poured himself a glass of the wine he had ordered and drank it down too quickly. He debated ordering a second carafe when he remembered that he had a little of the cognac left in the bedroom, so he tossed off the last of the wine, moved the rolling tray toward the main door, picked up his Gladstone bag, and made for the bedroom, determined to do his utmost to relax. He hung up the Turkish robe and scrambled into his pajamas, noticing again that there was a draft in the room. Pulling back the duvet, he got in between the sheets and pulled the duvet up to his chin as he reached for the television remote and toggled the sound back on.
“—ooding has claimed the lives of at least a hundred people in the town of San Tomas,” the anchorman intoned while pictures of a torrential river filled the screen. “Authorities are concerned that with two bridges and three roads wiped out, rescue workers may not be able to reach San Tomas for at least thirty-six hours.”
A suggestion of a pop claimed Bright’s attention; he sat up and felt a cold finger of air trace along his arm and shoulder. “Shit,” he said and got out of bed to fetch his laptop: Snow’s e-mail might be waiting for him, and he wanted to look it ove
r. The air was chilly as he crossed the bedroom, and he took a little time to conduct a search for the source of the draft and once again found the bathroom door into the outer hall ajar. Now he was bothered. He closed the door firmly and made a point of locking it. “I forgot before,” he said aloud, as if to reassure himself that he had. Returning to the bedroom, he turned on his computer, made his e-mail connection, and saw that Snow hadn’t yet sent the information. He conducted a desultory check of the rest of the e-mails, added one to Sheryl, telling her of his changed schedule. As he sent his e-mail to her, he admitted to himself that their relationship had probably cooled past saving. She no longer worried when he traveled and didn’t fret when he was delayed. Her own career was thriving, and increasingly she put her attention on her work rather than on him. He was startled to realize how much this saddened him. “Maybe if we’d married ...” he said, closing his laptop, setting it on the nightstand, turning down the lamp, and getting back under the covers.
The television was showing a fast-moving twister cutting a swath across southern Missouri, flinging buildings and vehicles into the air in crazed abandon; then a pastyfaced middle-aged man describing how his wife had vanished into the eye of the storm. “I couldn’t b’lieve it. I just couldn’t,” he said, his expression blank. “Up she went. Up. I couldn’t stop her.” This was followed by a weatherman with maps and charts, talking about activity zones and possible new tornados.
Bright took the last of the cognac in a single gulp, put the snifter aside, then lay back to watch the rest of the news. Almost at once the screen filled with a shot of central Bucharest, where two large mobs were locked in street fighting. The sounds of gunfire mixed with shouting and sirens. “—began when two Moldavian men were convicted of killing three youths of the pro-Turkish Reconciliation Party last year,” the announcer droned. Bright shook his head, glad he wouldn’t be going to Istanbul again any time soon. He watched the images flickering and tried to organize his thoughts as the first, welcome nudge of sleep came over him. He reached for the remote to turn it off, but it eluded him, and he sank back on the pillows, already in the twilight between slumber and wakefulness.
Strange how much this room was like the one in the Grand Colonial House in Buenos Aires. Or perhaps it was more like the Grand Victorian House in Hong Kong?
“—estimated the number of students protesting at six thousand. Early reports say that several hundred were arrested, and dozens sent to hospital—”
Student riots? Not in Hong Kong, surely. But there were men in threadbare clothes howling in the streets and sporadic gunfire from somewhere. Two men in uniforms that looked old-fashioned stood at the foot of the bed in what looked like the Grand Baroque House in Berlin, but with elements of other Faversham hotels mixed with it. They spoke eagerly, apparently preparing for a night of pleasure, for one of the men removed his tunic while the other took a silver cigarette case from somewhere and lit up, willing to wait his turn. On the bed, a woman reclined, her eyes half closed and smoky. Bright had the dismaying sensation of being permeated by the woman, so that he and she were transfixed by this partial dream. He tried to twist free, but her presence held him where he was as the men at the end of the bed prepared to have sex with her. Bright felt drugged and realized that the woman was high on something. Again he attempted to break free of her, and again he failed.
“—with the German chancellor saying that he would oppose funding for such a wasteful project—”
One of the men was naked now and caressing the woman on the bed in a perfunctory way before he climbed onto her and shoved between her thighs. Bright squirmed in disgust and sternly told himself to wake up. The men faded, and he seemed to be in Miss Faversham’s room in Los Angeles at the Spanish House; he recognized the exposed black beams and adobefinished walls. A slow wind flapped the draperies on the far wall, and the noise of traffic was loud in the room. Bright strove to wake up but was left to flounder on the bed while a tall, lean man with a pistol in his hand approached the bed, the barrel leveled at the occupant, who Bright realized was a middle-aged woman in a lavish peignoir. He felt more than heard her say, “You don’t want to do anything so stupid, Ronald, now do you?” and then she extended her arm toward the man. “You don’t have to be a fool.” The decor, Bright realized, was at least one renovation ago, and the clothes were those of the 1950s; the man looked like something out of a gangster movie. Bright squirmed, but only mentally, as the woman reached out for the gun. “You can put it down, Ronald. And put something better up.” No matter how corny this sounded to Bright, the man hesitated, and the woman smiled.
“—the penalty phase of the trial. Since Hammond was convicted on eleven counts of first-degree murder, it’s likely the jury won’t need much time to decide on the most severe—”
Now it was the Geneva hotel, probably in the eighties, Bright supposed. The room was dark and smelled of scented oil. He felt the woman, now noticeably older, stretched out through him, in spite of aching shoulders and hips. She was stroking her thighs and belly, murmuring, “Too bad about Ronald. Poor man. Too bad about Paul and Ernst, too bad about Demetrios, too bad about Jaime, too bad about Trevor, too bad about Papa, too bad about Claude, too bad about Sergei, too bad about Tazuki, too bad about ...” The names went on in a dreamy litany as Bright began to share the old lady’s arousal. He shuddered and tried to break free of the hold she had on him, but to no avail; her need possessed him, and he was inextricably bound to her presence. He shivered, unable to banish the cold that engulfed him even as the old woman suborned his body. He could share her memories, the faces and locations for each of the men. “One for each hotel,” she crooned as she shook in ecstasy, and Bright was seized by his own orgasm. “Each hotel a shrine, and a tomb.” She swallowed a pill and drifted into profound sleep, still reciting the names of men she had—had what? Had killed? Had seduced? Had—Bright moaned even as he lapsed into sleep.
“Before the dam collapsed, mandatory evacuations saved more than six thousand residents from drowning. Present damage estimates are at sixty million dollars and climbing. The premier of Alberta has already dispatched four hundred aid workers to the area most damaged by the dam failure, has ordered an investigation of the explosion that caused it, and has set up an identification and relocation office in West Frazier—”
Bright sat up with a cry, his eyes wild as he stared around the room, and saw only the television set, still turned to International CNN; the first pallid, pre-dawn light filled the room and made everything look slightly unreal. He lunged out of bed and staggered toward the bathroom, wanting nothing so much as to wash himself. As he stumbled through the door, he felt the draft again and noticed the outer bathroom door was once again ajar. “What the fuck—?” he muttered and went to lock the door again. He was about to fill the tub when he hesitated. So much of this bathroom was hers that he could not bring himself to expose himself to her again.
“That’s just silly,” he told his reflection and said, more forcefully, “You’ve been immersed in this story. You’re saturated with it. You were worn out. You fell asleep with the news on, and you made up things about Miss Faversham from what the TV said. Come on. You’ve got an assignment to finish.” He stared at himself, doing his best to ignore the breeze that went through the bathroom, and the old, old eyes that looked back at him from his reflection in the mirror.
Axis
Gary Lovisi
“The blood spatter spoke to me of love and obsession and was born in violent sexual release.”
I turned off my mini-recorder, put down my notes on the case, and thought again about what I had just discovered about the latest victim. That was Jennifer Kelly, murdered in a similar manner to the first victim, Wanda-June Esposito. But the Kelly murder scene showed some differences. The blood spatter was markedly different. I had to think over what that meant.
That was all before Ron was with me. He’d insisted on coming up.
“Julie,” he’d called so forcefully. “I have to s
ee you.”
“Can’t it wait? I’m in the middle of a new case, a second homicide that appears to be connected to the Esposito murder. That may mean a serial murderer... .” I tried to keep the excitement out of my voice, not really appropriate under the circumstances. However, that excitement was because I was a too-young, too-pretty, and too-new bloodstain analyst working for the police on a contract basis. I hoped this could be the case that made my career; you know, got it going to the big time. Maybe even TV spots with Greta and Geraldo. Ron’s insistence and nega-tivity about my chosen profession only complicated an already complicated relationship. He was a hotshot Wall Street trader on the way up, and he didn’t like what I was involved in.
“No, it can’t wait, Julie. I haven’t seen you all week... .”
“But I’m on this case ...”
“I know. You’re always on some kind of case. Look, I’m coming over.” Ron was like that; he never took no for an answer. Sometimes I really liked that about him, but tonight I didn’t.
I sighed, collected my paperwork, and prepared to put it away for the night. I tidied up the place, and then I took a shower and waited for Ron. I knew he could be possessive and obsessive, but the sex was totally incredible. Wild animal sex!
I waited in anticipation, wondering just what Ron had in store for me this time. Our first bout with rough sex had gone far over the limit. Ron had slapped my buttocks raw, calling me a mean, bad bitch, punishing me, humiliating me. However, instead of making me angry, it just got me excited, building me to a frenzy I’d never known before. Ron and I went on from there. He never slapped my face, and he always told me he loved me as he hit me. As long as he told me he loved me when he hit me, I figured that was okay. I know it was out there, but we liked being out there.
When he got to my place, he attacked me like a rabid beast whose lust hadn’t been sated in months. I loved the attention, perhaps even required it. I melted under his power and let him take me hard and often. We both liked it rough. We often did it like this, so fast and furious. I realized that all the pent-up emotion these last two cases had brought out in me was coming out in our sexual bouts. If anything, once Ron initiated our rough foreplay, I continued it and even brought it into even more intense areas we’d never explored before.
