The Weeping Buddha

by Heather Dune Macadam

  Devon looked at him questioningly.

  “You were right.”

  Frank walked up to join them, mumbling something about never getting a night off. Jo stopped to mumble with him, then let Loch and Devon catch him up on the details of the evening. “So, where’s DeBritzi?” he asked.

  “Staking out Godwyn’s apartment in the city.”

  “He’s not there.” Frank looked at the corpse.

  “He’s on his way to the precinct now to question Shapiro. I’m going to finish up with the folks in the zendo.”

  “Devon? Loch?” They could hear Aileen’s frantic voice from the road arguing with the duty officer who was having trouble getting her to stay behind the police tape. “Let me in there! Is Devon okay? Devon?”

  “Shit!” Devon looked at her watch. It was five-thirty a.m. She headed down the path and yelled, “Hey, Leenie I’m fine! There’s been another murder, though.”

  “Oh my god!”

  “How many others are going to do the same thing?” Loch whispered in her ear.

  “A few, Maddie, Alex … a few regulars will come back, too.”

  “That makes it easier. I can get everybody questioned that way.” He headed down the path toward Devon’s friend. Aileen was visibly upset but Devon and Frank had work to do and moved away as Loch took her gently by the arm and led her into the zendo where he had the rest of the group waiting to be questioned.

  Devon began to point out what she’d covered. “I’ve cast the footwear impressions but there are no prints on the weapon, or the thermos there. Do you have the black light with you?”

  “You want to scan the area before they come to take him down?” She nodded.

  “Bad way to go, skewered to a tree like that.”

  “If he was drugged maybe he didn’t feel too much.” She didn’t believe what she was saying, but half hoped it was true and God had died without pain.

  Frank began to walk along Josh’s trail, stooping every few steps to pick something up with a pair of tweezers, which he then dropped inside individually marked bags that Devon held open for him. She labeled while he continued to search the area for any traces of hair, fabric, or blood that might prove helpful.

  Devon borrowed a sketchpad and some charcoal from Hans and began to copy the carving on Godwyn’s chest. His skin was so dark that Frank had to hold the light on him to illuminate the markings.Whether she was getting adept at Japanese characters or Josh had not finished writing the message, Devon was not sure.

  The fog was finally lifting as dawn began to creep across the horizon, faintly at first as if still shy of the dark. Devon had to blink a few times to make sure the sky was changing and wasn’t still black, but a definite film of gray was beginning to wrap over the black tree limbs still clicking in the wind. The breeze would push the fog back to sea and they’d be able to see much more clearly in a couple of hours.

  “The motive still isn’t plain,” Loch surmised.

  “If Josh was cast by Gabe in the Having Hand sculpture and if that meant he slept with Gabe, and keeping his indiscretions a secret was important to his career,” she pointed out, “perhaps Beka found out about Josh, and Gabe, and Edilio. Maybe the whole serial killer idea was a mistake.”

  “Sounds like serial monogamy instead.” They began to walk toward the road together, not like the mod squad this time. They were too tired to be cool.

  “I don’t think Josh could have done Todd, Loch.”

  “We may never know what happened to Todd,” he reminded her.

  Even if Loch and Gary proved that Josh killed Gabe and Beka, as well as Godwyn and Edilio, could they prove that he was responsible for Todd, or the other missing college kids Detective Freesia brought out of her files every New Year’s? Was anyone responsible, or were they simply arbitrary, accidental deaths?

  Sam Daniels was waiting for them as they came under the police tape and could barely contain himself as he demanded to know what had happened. Loch told him that they had Gabe and Beka’s killer, then paused because he was not sure what else to say.

  “What about my brother?”

  “I can’t promise anything.”

  “Nobody can ever promise anything!” He lashed out at a nearby car, kicking the tire and growling with despair. “It’s not fair!”

  Devon reached out to touch his arm but he shook her off and headed down the road. She was about to start after him, when she noticed the way Loch was watching Sam.

  “He looks like a trapped tiger.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “Didn’t both brothers have a thing for Beka?”

  “Yes.”

  “Get that videotape, honey. We may be looking at Todd all wrong.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  When you can do nothing, what can you do?

  —ZEN KOAN

  The interrogation room was bare except for a desk with steel hooks on it for cuffing and a window with bars on it. Outside in the hallway was a metal kind of ballet beam, used to cuff prisoners while they awaited processing or interrogation. Every year at Halloween the officers handcuffed a mannequin to wait alongside the collars, and this year they had dressed it up like Santa Claus and left it out. Josh was cuffed next to Santa, despite his protests. Loch was not about to trust a killer, whether elf or surgeon.

  “I told you,” Josh complained again, “Godwyn told me he was meeting Devon behind the house. When he didn’t show up at the zendo I got worried, and that’s when I found him.”

  “Very plausible, Mr. Shapiro. Except for one thing: Why didn’t you just ask Devon where Godwyn was if you were so worried?”

  “He told me we had to act as if nothing was going on so no one would get suspicious. Besides, it’s silent as a tomb in that place. Have you ever been inside a zendo? You don’t just stop somebody and say, ‘Hey, I thought you were meeting God out back.’ They’re Buddhists. They don’t even believe in God!”

  “Cute.” Loch smiled evilly at his villain. “You’ve been practicing that one, haven’t you?”

  Josh was sweating. “When Devon came out, I figured I was supposed to meet her in the back. So I went back there and found Godwyn. I didn’t know what to do!”

  “Murderers rarely know what to do when they get caught.”

  “I swear the only reason I was there is because Godwyn told me to come and meet him.”

  “I was watching from the kitchen, Josh. Be very careful with your lies.”

  “Why would I lie? I could see you watching.” Josh was beginning to sound panicked. “It’s the truth!”

  “Of course it is. Nobody ever lies to us, do they, Gary?”

  “Never. We trust all of our murderers to tell us the complete and honest truth.”

  “Didn’t the footprints in the mud show you I’d been there only once?”

  “Actually, we have your tracks going to and from the zendo and then one set returning later. You took two breaks, Josh—one at eleven o’clock and one at three-thirty, remember?”

  Josh nodded miserably.

  Gary outlined the crime the way he and Loch saw it, laying it all out for their suspect so he would know they knew he was guilty. “The only thing I don’t get is why you returned to the scene.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “Were you stalking Devon?” Loch felt himself burning with anger at the very thought that Devon might have been a target of this sick man’s mind.

  “I thought she was the murderer.”

  “Right, Detective Halsey looks exactly like a murderer. Was it the long hair that gave her away?” Loch taunted him, hoping for some outburst that would show Josh for what he truly was, a psychopath.

  “You’re the murderer, Shapiro. Come on and admit it!” Gary slammed his fist down on the table. “You had an affair with Gabe and who knows who else, and you wanted to hush it up. Didn’t want your showpiece wife to find out you jerked the sausage both ways?”

  “I’m straight!”

  “Then why are your hands in hi
s sculpture at the loft in New York?

  “Because of Beka. He cast Beka’s lovers along with his own, that’s why he called it Having Hand.”

  “Did Katiti know about you two?”

  “Katiti likes to think I was a virgin before I met her. She’d kill me if she knew about Beka. She’s already pissed off about Alex and me.”

  “Is there anybody you didn’t fuck?”

  “It was the ’80s! Of course not!”

  “Gary, do you remember what we found in Godwyn’s clothes? Something we might have missed in all the excitement?” Loch turned his back on Josh for two reasons—to make him feel uncomfortable as a nonentity and to entice him into an attack. Josh did not move.

  Gary picked up the copy of the inventory sheet from Godwyn’s belongings and began to read it out loud. “Keys, a wallet with twenty-five dollars cash, green card, New York State driver’s license, matches, a pack of Dunhills, another set of keys, Devon’s beeper.”

  “Did you think planting her beeper on your victim would throw us off?”

  “I’m not stupid.” Josh glowered at Detective DeBritzi.

  “Two sets of keys? What do you bet one goes to Gabe’s loft in the city?” Loch said to his partner.

  “Stake my pension on it.”

  “Make sure Frank pulls the prints off those keys,” Loch told him.

  “Already on it.”

  “See, Josh? We already have you placed at the scene, now we’re going to link this murder with the others. How many are there? Was Todd one of your victims?”

  “God no.”

  “You went back to get the keys from Godwyn, didn’t you? Why’d you need his keys, don’t you have your own pair?”

  “Maybe he borrowed Godwyn’s set to kill Edilio,” Gary suggested.

  “I’m telling you, I only went once! When I found him.” Tears filled Josh’s eyes. “Wait! My shoes were damp when I put them on the first time. Someone must have taken them by accident.”

  “Maybe the real murderer tried to frame you—that must be it.Don’t you think?” Gary turned to his partner and winked. “And you just now remembered this vital piece of information? Isn’t it amazing how that always happens?”

  “It’s true!” Josh complained.

  “Well that explains it, doesn’t it?” Lochwood mocked him. “I for one am relieved. What about you, Gary?” The two detectives bantered back and forth as Josh squirmed in his seat, getting more and more uncomfortable.

  “If Dr. Shapiro says its true, it must be, Gary. He is a doctor, after all. Should we release him? Obviously, he’s telling the truth.”

  “Obviously.”

  There was a knock on the door. “This what you were looking for?” A uniformed officer handed DeBritizi a bag.

  “Well, I’ll be. Beka Imamura’s cellphone. Do you know how long we’ve been looking for this, Mr. Shapiro?” Gary stared into the murderer’s eyes.

  Loch shook his head as if trying to get his thoughts around the discrepancies in Josh’s testimony. They had footprints going to and from the murder scene right back to the zendo. Why had he gone back to the body? What had he forgotten?

  Loch jumped up and poked Josh hard in the chest. “What were you going to carve on Godwyn? That’s what’s missing, isn’t it! What was Godwyn’s koan? You got part of it done, but something, or someone, disturbed you.”

  Josh glared at Loch, then uttered those four words Loch hated most in the English language, “I want my lawyer.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  When your activity of mind is exhausted and your capacity for feeling comes to a dead end, if something should take place not unlike the cat springing upon a mouse, then in a flash great livingness surges up.

  —A ZEN MASTER

  Devon lit a stick of incense and tried to say something about Beka, but the words stuck in her heart and only tears answered her desire to speak. Her mother stepped up to the front of the room and took her daughter’s hand. She did not bow to Buddha or light incense, she simply turned to face Beka’s friends and family and said with an almost whimsical smile, “What I will remember most about Beka is her dancing, on the beach, on Manhattan rooftops, in the potato fields outside our home. Anywhere she felt needed movement, anywhere that felt lonely, she danced. She was like a daughter to me and I grieve with you, Biz, Bert. I will always see her dancing out of the corner of my eye.” Devon and her mother sat down, then Alexandra walked up to the front of the room.

  Alex bowed to Buddha and lit the incense, then with a voice rough from crying spoke softly, “She was the last Isadora. That is all.She was the last—forever.”

  Others stood and spoke or read poems for the dearly departed.The scent of sandalwood infused the air.

  After the memorial service Devon and her parents took Uncle Biz and Bert to the airport where the coffin carrying Beka’s body awaited its final journey home. Devon promised to come to Hawaii soon, then returned to the East End feeling empty and worn out. She still had to deal with Alex and the videotape. Despite Alexandra’s vulnerability and the soft words she had spoken at the service, she was a brutal negotiator when it came to retrieving the tape. It took two hours of haggling over the legalities before Devon finally got her hands on New Year’s Eve, 1984.

  She called into work to see if she should come in, but Frank told her everything was moving smoothly. “Stay home and watch the tape, Dev,” he suggested. “We’ve got Shapiro on Godwyn, and it won’t take much to prove he killed Beka and Gabe. Right now Brennen’s more concerned about finding a link to Todd.”

  Josh, a murderer. She could barely believe it. They had already poked holes into his alibi for New Year’s Eve, and it looked as if Katiti, while innocent, had lied about his whereabouts for the entire evening at 75 Main. According to the maitre d’, he had ducked out for over an hour and tipped the man to keep his mouth shut. Josh maintained he was having an affair but wasn’t able to produce the woman.

  It was four o’clock when Devon finally made it home, and after a quick romp with Boo she was able to sit down, pop the video into her VCR, and collapse on the couch. Boo seemed overly concerned about her well-being and carefully sniffed her to make sure that she was all in one piece. Once his investigation proved she was whole and intact, he dabbed her with his tongue and laid down at her feet. Her body felt the way it did after she’d been in a boat for a long time, as if the earth were moving too fast for her legs. She’d been up for yet another thirty-six hours, the third time in six days, or something like that.

  “What ya watchin’?” Aileen asked as she came through the kitchen door.

  “The infamous videos—both of them. Alex finally let me have it after I promised to give her my firstborn.”

  “She didn’t.”

  Devon brandished the legal waiver she had had to sign before getting hold of the tapes. “A testament to the ’90s, if there ever was one. Sign, sue, or die.”

  The second tape was on the table waiting to be played, but the first was already running.

  “So this is it?”

  “In the flesh.”

  “That’s so cool.”

  “If these disappearances are all linked it’ll be cool, otherwise it’ll just be depressing.”

  Aileen looked at the screen. “I can’t believe Alex shot them toot-ing up.”

  There were lines on the table and Sam, Josh, Alex, Godwyn, Maddie, and Sam were snorting coke and laughing. “I think Alex shot them doing everything—at least that’s what I’m hoping.”

  * * *

  “Good stuff,” Beka was saying on the screen. “Sometimes I feel like I could dance forever with shit like this.”

  There was the sound of a door slamming and footsteps coming up the stairs.

  “What the hell is that?” Todd stepped into the camera frame as Sam tried to hide the stuff. It was too late. “Are you all idiots?” Todd yelled. He threatened to tell their parents, and leave for home at once.

  Beka sidled up to him and handed him the straw. “Come
on, Todd.It won’t hurt. I do it all the time.”

  It took some convincing, but finally Todd did his first line, looked into the camera, and said, “I don’t feel a thing. Should I try some more?”

  Everyone—Maddie, Josh, Alex, Beka, even Sam—laughed. “Go for it,” Josh said.

  Aileen put the kettle on the stove and threw two teabags into the pot. “So, Josh killed Beka and Gabe? Hard to believe.”

  “It is. I have to admit I’m grateful that it wasn’t someone I cared for.”

  “But Josh? I mean, who’d have thunk?” Aileen stood up. “You gonna watch the whole thing?”

  “Only time I’ve ever gotten to work from my couch and eat popcorn!”

  “You could fast-forward to where he disappears.”

  “Might miss something. Was there something you wanted to watch on TV?”

  “No, no,” Aileen said in a mock-Dragnet voice as she headed for the kitchen. “Wouldn’t want to interfere with police work. You want some tea?”

  Devon nodded, slouched back, and draped her legs across the arm of the couch. “I can’t believe they did so many drugs.”

  “Josh doesn’t seem the type.” Aileen wasn’t listening. “I mean, I’ve been taking care of their dog for a year now and Katiti seems more like a murderer than Josh. He’s too pussy-whipped to be a serial killer.”

  Devon laughed out loud. “Don’t worry, they’re picking her up for questioning, too.”

  “Loch’s interviewing her?”

  “Interrogating.”

  “I should go check on their dog. Katiti will forget all about him.” The kettle began to whistle. Aileen poured the hot water into a pot, threw in a few teaspoons of sugar and a little bit of milk, and fit the tea cozy over it. “It’s light and sweet like you like it.” She placed it on the living room table in front of Devon, then brought her an empty mug.

  “You’ve been a real godsend, Aileen. Thanks.”

  “It’s the least I can do.” She poured Devon’s tea and handed it to her. “I’m going to drive over to the Shapiro house and tuck their dog in for the night.”