by Lotta Smith
“Depends on which answer you want—the sweet little fairytale one or the bitter reality.”
“I’d prefer the latter.”
“Reality often hurts.”
“I know, but maybe not as much as jumping onto a bicycle with the seat missing.”
“Hmm…I liked Naked Gun movies. Okay then, the answer is no.”
I closed my eyes and I was silent for ten seconds. “I knew.”
“I’m sorry. But that guy is a typical sociopath with a trait of compulsive lying. Or a psychopath, those terms are often regarded to be interchangeable.”
Neither term gave warm feelings.
“Can I ask you something?”
“Yep, go ahead.”
“When you say someone is a sociopath, are they really free of feelings such as guilt and remorse, or are they just excellent at hiding their feelings?”
“That’s a good question.” He stopping scribbling. “And I agree it’s debatable if one can actually learn what other people are truly feeling or thinking deep inside. My guess is that so-called psychopaths/sociopaths are free of remorse; also they’re exceptionally good at hiding their feelings.”
“I see.” I released a sigh. I felt numb.
“Anyway, it’s hard for anyone to change their behavioral pattern. By the way, when you lived with him, did he ever physically hurt you?”
“No, he never even raised a hand.” Warren was a lying, cheating, jilting, womanizing bastard; however, he seemed to have some standards. “He was always a gentleman, and I believe he still is, if you don’t count his compulsive lying as abuse.”
“Okay. Now I must say you’re damn lucky. People lacking emotions such as remorse often get physically violent as to abusing their spouses and significant others, sometimes to death. If that makes a difference.”
“It does. Dr. Arlington, one more thing, when a serial killer takes eyeballs from their victims, what do you think is his purpose or motive?”
My motto: It doesn’t hurt to ask.
“It’s easy to list a series of possible motives for the behavior, but it’s very embarrassing when nothing hits the reality, even marginally. In short, I have no idea, and the best measure is meeting the murderer face to face. However, even if you do so, there’s no guarantee this murderer will tell you the truth.”
The longer I talked to him, the more he started to look like the Cheshire Cat from Alice in Wonderland rather than a Harry Styles lookalike.
“How about the late foot-fetish inmate? What was his motive?”
“Oh, he cut off women’s right feet and stored them in freezers. According to the record, he chewed it occasionally. But he never really opened up when asked about why he cut off only the right foot.”
He rubbed his jaw, as if it was the first time he had seriously thought about the late serial murderer. “I’m not sure, but maybe even the guy himself didn’t know his purpose?”
I thanked him and got the hell out of the prison.
Chapter 19
I walked northeast past the train station, past rows of little old apartments and shops. I headed down the cramped street that led to the riverside of the Thames, as if I was channeling a water bug lured to not-so-clean water. The thick clouds that were earlier covering the sky had cleared away and the sun was shining.
I glanced at the muddy, murky, brownish water. The river was notorious for the cholera outbreak in the mid-nineteenth century, and its water was not at all alluring. But I liked the interpretation that even filthy water gets to flow into the ocean, evaporate, and later return to the river as raindrops, clean, clear, and full of innocence. For me, this perspective suggested a happy scenario that any sins could be cleansed somehow, someday.
I leaned on the fence by the river and recalled my encounter with Warren. I went to the prison to quit being the dumpee and become the dumper, but after the visit, I was still the dumpee. It didn’t bode very well with me. No, disturbing was more like the word. In fact, disturbing was an understatement.
Even more outrageous was that after all those years, Warren still managed to remain a lying, cheating, jilting bastard. His lying style hadn’t changed a bit, and I was positive he was still absolutely guilt-free.
I looked down at the Thames. The river was flat and glassy, even though the water was muddy brown as usual. I started to smile. I didn’t know the reason why I was smiling, and I didn’t care. My head was too messed up to think. My smile got wider and wider, and finally, I broke into a fit of giggles.
Not that I was happy to find him still trying to get what he wanted by using me, but it was the nerve of the weasel that made me laugh. His lying, cheating, and no apologizing policy was outrageous, but somehow, I wasn’t shocked, infuriated, or saddened. On the contrary, I felt somehow contented to see him so unchanged. During our marriage, he used to lie like breathing, and I didn’t catch his lies until after the divorce. For me, seeing him still lying through the teeth was something like watching Jerry and George plotting a little scheme about nothing in Seinfeld reruns. Besides that, he even had the audacity to pick up a new wife. Poor thing, I totally sympathized with the new wife. I hated to sound like a sour grape, but she must be dense for a lawyer.
As I giggled, I found that my feelings toward my ex was neutral. Deep in my heart, I knew he had already moved on, leaving me behind. And I had no hard feelings about it. I had also moved on.
Okay, that wasn’t true.
Actually, my feelings toward Warren the bastard weren’t neutral. I had hard feelings toward him. I was still taking it personal. No, I was taking everything personal.
I still remembered that night so vividly. It was one night after finalizing the divorce. I called Warren out of post-divorce blues. At that point, he was still a financial tycoon without a care in the world. The phone rang eight times before he took my call. I didn’t have a specific topic to discuss, but when I heard his voice, I lost it. I ended up bursting out crying. He told me not to cry, and before I knew, I was brawling like an idiot. He whispered consoling words that meant nothing and everything. At the end of the conversation, I clumsily said take care. Then he said the words: “By the way, Kelly, can we make it our last private conversation? It was nice talking to you, but it’s not like we’re married anymore. And we’ve chosen to go our separate ways, you know?”
I caught a female voice in the background. I demanded to know who she was. When we were still married and cohabiting, he asked me for a divorce at the dinner table. At that time, he fed me that he had to deal with a personal issue on his own as the reason for the divorce, and he denied the presence of other women. I deserved to know. But the moment I demanded an explanation, he hung up. Two days later, I learned about Maria-Diana the Brazilian dancer in the tabloid.
It was a dark, humiliating memory I’d buried in the deep bottom of my memory landfill.
As I recollected that phone call, it was pretty clear that taking time to visit him was a huge mistake. I wanted to see him serving one hundred plus years as a prisoner, not as a happy, laid back, and remarried man who had moved to a Spartan-themed minimalist condo with maximum security.
A gigantic wave of self-pity was coming my way. I tried to convince myself I just wanted closure. I wished I was proud enough to keep my chin up so that I could save myself from drowning in a deep, dark hole of endless melancholy.
Speaking of melancholy, it was hard to indulge yourself in it when someone in the neighborhood was blasting “Friggin’ in the riggin” by Sex Pistols at full volume. Somehow, the words of the song about a ship called Venus with the whore in bed figurehead and a rampant penis-shaped mast seriously interfered with my self-pity process.
That was something that let me know the universe had a twisted sense of humor.
Okay, so I still had a grudge against him, but at least I wasn’t jealous of his new wife. Hell no, not at all. After all those years that I hoped to be still with him, and after pathetically waiting for him to call my old cell phone, I was glad I didn’t h
ave anything to do with him anymore.
On top of all that, now I wasn’t even sure if I ever really loved him.
Gosh, what was I thinking? Who was I kidding?
My giggles had escalated to a full-brown howling. I was laughing uncontrollably. Had it been a posh residential area, someone would have phoned the police already, notifying there was “this crazy woman, probably on drugs, laughing her head off.”
“For your information.”
I sensed a familiar deep voice coming from the sideway, and a subtle scent of Aqua di Gio.
“Today’s temperature is twelve degrees in Celsius, which is only fifty-four in Fahrenheit, and if I were you, I wouldn’t jump into the water.”
“Is that so? What a shame. Jumping into the river was exactly what I was intending to do.” I was still laughing so hard that I almost choked. “I was so looking forward to swimming in the Thames. Though the water looks a tad bit muddy, it sure would be lovely. Believe me, I swim like a dolphin. I was once invited to join the national swim team to train for the Olympics.”
“Pants on fire. You’re not much of a swimmer.”
“Is it a coincidence that we met here, or…?” I turned and looked up at Michael Archangel, who was standing by my side.
“It looked like you were having a good time, and I thought, why not crash and boost the fun?”
“Boost the fun?” I said incredulously. That was a reply which I was not expecting. In fact, it would have been less surprising if he had admitted to coming there to make fun of me.
“Yeah. Don’t tell me you didn’t know I’m a born entertainer.” He cocked his head.
“A born entertainer who happens to look good in a men’s suit. Very interesting,” I said. He was wearing a light gray Hugo Boss suit, light blue shirt, a tie in indigo, and a pair of black leather boots from Alexander McQueen. Again, he looked positively good in men’s attire.
“Sometimes you’ve got to play dress up, I guess.” He shrugged nonchalantly, as if the drastic change in the choice of attire was unimportant to him.
He didn’t look uncomfortable in men’s attire, so it was true that he used to wear men’s clothes in the past. I was tempted to ask him why he bothered to wear women’s attire when he looked great in men’s garments, but I backed out of it. I didn’t want to ask him personal questions on account that doing that would give him the right to ask me personal questions.
“How was the case?” I asked.
“It was a piece of cake. At a university hospital, the professor of cardiology dropped dead while performing a coronary artery bypass surgery. Initially, his death was presumed to be a heart attack, but one of the fellow professors, an associate of Mickelson, called him just in case. The killer was one of the nurses assisting the operation. It turned out her target wasn’t just the male professor but the female patient on the operation table as well. This female patient was the head nurse of the surgical unit. Both the professor and the head nurse were allergic to peanuts, and the weapon used was a small portion of peanut oil. Basically, it was the byproduct of a messy love triangle. According to the killer, the patient on the operation table was her former lover, and the professor had just butted in and stole her. The last straw was that the two of them had announced their engagement. She was pretty much insulted, so she decided to kill them both by poisoning them with peanut oil.”
“That sounds complicated.”
“I know.” Archangel rolled his eyes.
The Sex Pistols track ended and Ozzy Osbourne’s “Crazy Train” started playing. We burst out laughing in unison.
“So, how did the killer poison the victim with peanut oil?”
“She manipulated the top of overshoe foot covers with the known allergen. In the hospital surgical area, they have doors operated by kicking and it’s mandatory for everyone entering the area, save for the patients, to put on a pair of overshoe foot covers. So the victim puts on peanut-contaminated foot covers and it touched the skin around his ankles. In addition to that, he inhaled peanut-oil fumes. That resulted in the victim dropping dead in the middle of surgery. The vaporized fume of peanut oil had almost killed the patient as well, not to mention having your surgeon dying while your chest’s being cut open isn’t a favorable factor. Fortunately, she survived.”
“The more I learn, the crazier it sounds.”
“I know. How’s your ex doing?” Archangel said casually.
I thought about pointing out just because I’m in this neighborhood didn’t mean I came here to see Warren, but I knew that would make me look more pathetic. After all, this here wasn’t a neighborhood you’d come by just to enjoy walking.
So I said, “He’s very well. Still lying like breathing. And, oh, he’s married a new wife. She’s a lawyer.”
“A lawyer married an imprisoned swindler?” His hands went up in the air. “He’s getting better and better.”
“At what?”
“At lying and manipulating people. I saw it coming. Now he’s targeting every living person.”
“By the way, how did you figure out I was here?”
“Are you sure you want to hear that?” He tilted his head to one side, answering my question with another question.
“Well, I guess I’ll pass that at this moment.” I shrugged. “Did you miss me?”
“Yup.” To my astonishment, he nodded.
“Sweet.” I couldn’t help smiling. Took a day off and my employer already missed me.
Then he continued. “I’m famished. You know what? A tiny packet of cookies doesn’t make a breakfast.”
“Hello? You followed me here just because you were hungry?”
“Oh yeah. I trust your instinct finding good food, though I’ve zero trust with your taste in men.”
I rolled my eyes. What a compliment.
“Has it ever occurred to you that it’s my day off and I’m expected to enjoy my vacation?”
“Of course,” he said matter-of-factly. “Like I said, I’m very entertaining and my presence is an added bonus to your time off. You’ve gotta thank me.”
I cracked up laughing. Forget about keeping a poker face. Maybe it was his boldness that made me laugh, or the realization that I’m jinxed to be stuck with men lacking modesty and sensibility.
With Archangel mentioning food, I realized I was indeed hungry. Okay, I needed lunch, and I appreciated having company rather than eating alone.
“How about some jellied eels?” I suggested.
“Get real.” He made a gagging sound. “I’m not in the mood to taste public restroom floor, which totally tastes like jellied eels.”
“I didn’t know you’ve eaten public restroom floor before. Okay, so how about some pies and mashed potatoes? Or fish and chips? There’s a pub I’ve been to before; it was not offensive.” I meant, three years ago, it was somewhat edible.
“Sounds good.”
“Don’t hold high expectations. We’re in London,” I warned him and started walking to the pub.
It was doing business at the same place as the last time I visited London. This was one of the good things about Europe. Unlike in D.C., L.A., or New York City, eateries didn’t just come and go on a daily basis.
It was a rare sunny day in London, so we took an open café-style table outside the pub.
“If I recall it right, a serial murderer called Greg Marshall had been imprisoned there at Belmarsh.” Archangel took out a small packet of ketchup and doused a gush of it on the dish of fish and chips.
“The one who collected women’s right feet?” I asked. “By the way, do you always carry ketchup around?”
“Yes to both.” He took out more packets from his jacket pocket. “Yes, I’m talking about the right foot fetish, and yeah, things never go wrong with ketchup. You want some?”
The waitress looked in our direction with keen interest. Her age was between twenty-something to fifty-something. When she’d brought the food to our table, she looked pretty much bored. Now she wasn’t blasé. I was sure s
he disapproved of tourists flooding the entire plate with their made-in-America ketchup.
I declined before telling him about Dr. Arlington’s opinion, including the part about Greg never confiding to anyone about the reason for collecting only the right feet.
“Typical.” He snorted. “‘Never opened up’ is a good term to replace ‘Couldn’t get that SOB to spill his guts.’ Talk about understatement.”
“Hmm, you’ve got a point, I guess.”
“I’ve always got a point.”
“Still, I’m disappointed that it’s not very clear about the logics of killers who collect other people’s body parts.” I took a bite of a pie and mush and wished I hadn’t declined his ketchup offer. The food wasn’t all that yucky, but tasteless.
“Don’t let that discourage you. Researching the past murderers sometimes helps understand the current cases, but sometimes doesn’t.”
“What causes a person to collect certain body parts?” I frowned, juggling not-so-yummy food with a fork.
“Many factors are listed for the possible etiologies: birth defects in the central nervous system, past history of domestic abuse, substance abuse, particular blood-flow-patterns in the brain such as a markedly low blood flow in the prefrontal cortex, hormonal abnormalities—you name it, they call it a possible cause for violent crimes. No one’s real certain about it. Even the murderers themselves have no clue as to what contributed the most to drive them to violence, I’m afraid. The important part is always hidden in the black box of insanity.”
I sighed. “I was hoping to get a clue. When I heard about that killer, I thought I could at least grasp some kind of pattern in the thought processes of serial killers.”
“Serial killers pick certain type of victims, then go for the kill. It’s simple. They’ve got their own rules that are hard to understand for the rest of us. Whether they kill for pleasure or another purpose, it’s the same.”
“For your information, I’m hoping to contribute to the investigation. Remember, I happen to be your assistant?”
“For your information, I’ve got a possible lead Mickelson’s associates are going to look into,” Archangel said matter-of-factly. “In addition, I do remember that you’re my assistant, and unlike you, I wouldn’t miss important details such as the employer takes breakfast as a very important ritual to charge energy for the long, hard day and that he likes something more nutritious than a tiny packet of cookies and some café latte.”
