Shadow Dancers

by Herbert Lieberman

  At that point, as surely as if a switch were flicked, something inside him would turn off and he would enter a different, a higher plane of consciousness … a place of utter calm. The numbers would still be there, but slowed exquisitely, like tiny molecules falling through heavy liquid, and he was suddenly aware of some preternaturally heightened sense within himself. The sensation was that of the keenest excitation, not entirely unlike sex.

  In the cascade of numbers falling slowly before his eyes he could see patterns and combinations repeating themselves with startling frequency. But not only this: he could take these sequences and project them out into near infinity. There were, of course, the simple ones like 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32 — demonstrating the power of 2; then mindbendingly complex ones like 1, 1, 2, 5, 14, 38, 120, 353 — representing the number of different ways of folding ever-longer strips of postage stamps. There were patterns that consisted of numbers in which each was the sum of the two previous numbers, such as 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55. And more complex variations based on the three, or sometimes four, previous numbers. There were series in which one had to double the last term and then add the second to last, and there were beautifully simple prime numbers that were one less than a power of 2, such as 3, 7, 31, etc.

  Of course he knew none of these patterns and was unaware that theoretical mathematicians, working with sophisticated computers, had been tracking them for years. He had no training in any of this, and had he been told that men, learned men, devoted whole lifetimes to the study of such things, he would have been baffled and not a little amused. Ironically, in the realm of simple arithmetic, he was nearly illiterate, barely able to add a column of numbers. His peculiar facility was a form of highly developed idiot savantism — although Warren Mars was by no means an idiot. Quite the contrary. On certain levels, he was actually a very clever fellow.

  Given the first three or four digits on a typical license plate, say, for example, 467, he would automatically move that out into 9, 10, 11, 12, 14, 16, 17, cracking the inherent code to it at once. Driving along at 55 miles per hour, a 125 would instantly become 12, 29, 70, 169, 408, 985, and so on out into a gray, colorless void where he was flying free.

  It was the passion of a madman, with a certain element of whimsy. But at the completion of the exercise, when he would appear to come back to himself, the car still nosing nicely along at 55 mph, he would be scarcely aware that he was limp and exhausted, and that he was bathed in a cold, clammy sweat from head to toe.

  He was not aware of what sort of an ordeal he’d been through. He had no idea how his mind had been stretched by the ruthless tyranny of these numbers. For him it was all simply an amusing game at which he was incontestably the unqualified master.

  It was in the small border village of Douglaston, just on the line between Queens and Nassau, that Warren saw the woman. He’d been driving up and down the pretty little streets with their small, cookie-cutter homes all set neatly in straight, unwavering rows, each on its own tiny plot of well-tended lawn.

  She’d been standing with her back to the street, bending over, working out front in her garden. There was a car parked in the driveway, all shiny and new, a late-model Japanese make. It was something about the way the house sat there, neat, trim, and tidy, separated from its immediate neighbors by tall privet hedges on either side, that told him it was good. The address above the door was 112. Almost from the moment he’d seen that, something in him started to vibrate.

  It was roughly 11 A.M., an hour he well knew; husbands were long gone and not expected back until after dark. It was late March and cloudy. Warm weather and much rain had brought an early thaw. The woman had dropped to her knees, cleaning out the debris of winter from a rose bed. It was far too early for anything to be up, save for an anxious crocus or a snowdrop or two. But she was out there all the same.

  He pulled up slowly to the front and stopped and watched her for a time. She never looked up when he reached over and lifted the latch of the little picket fence and walked in. The ground was still wet from the morning dew. His feet moving across the soft, spongy grass left the imprint of his shoes.

  For a time he stood there behind her, watching her edge and weed, her small trowel turning the barely unfrozen earth. Her back sloped forward and down to the ground, she gave the appearance of someone kneeling and praying there. When he cleared his throat, she turned and gasped, making a funny little hissing sound like air escaping from a tire.

  She looked up to see a slight, dark young man with a smiling, agreeable face. There was nothing particularly remarkable in his looks. The expression was thoughtful, and possibly a bit amused. The impression it gave was that of a slightly crooked smile, rather vague and fixed, as if its owner was accustomed to using his lips to hide some defect of his teeth.

  “Beg pardon. You s’pose I could use your phone? My car’s broke down.”

  He could see from the way she looked at him that she was looking for reasons to say no.

  “Where’s your car?” she asked, affecting sternness. “Out front there. The green one.”

  She looked out at the car for a while. Above the white picket fence she could see only a shiny bright green roof and just the top of the hood with a Mercedes emblem on it.

  She pondered awhile. “I tell you, my husband and I — we make it a practice never to let strangers in.”

  He laughed quietly. “Things being what they are nowadays, I can’t say I blame you.”

  She kept looking at him, up and down, but never directly in the eye. She was probably forty or so, a pleasant-looking lady who took good care of herself. She probably had children, all grown up and out of the house.

  “All I want to do is call a garage,” he explained sympathetically. “They’ll just come out and tow me in. I’d just be a minute.”

  There was something boyish and awkward and terribly appealing in the way he presented it. Even as she was saying okay, he could see she was regretting it. She laid her trowel down and stood up. “Okay — follow me. I’ll show you where it is.”

  It was cool and shady inside, the blinds all down and drawn against the sun, and the place smelled of morning coffee and bacon and cigarettes. Someone smoked a great deal in that house. He hated the smell of cigarettes. By that time he had slipped a pair of white rubber surgical gloves neatly over his hands.

  In the few moments it took to get from the front door to the kitchen, he’d already staked out the place. He’d seen the Sony Trinitron in the den, the Panasonic PV 5850 video deck on top of it, the KLH speakers high up on the wall, and on a desk in the den stacked with folders and ledgers, an IBM-XT computer with 20MB hard drive, a compatible drive, plus the keyboard. He knew the model well and admired it.

  “Phone’s right here,” she said, turning, and saw the knife pointing at her chest. It was one of those Sicilian fisherman’s jobs, used to gut fish and hack bait. It had a bone handle and a six-inch tempered-steel blade with serrations. When she looked at him there was an amused expression on her face, as if she thought he was having a little joke.

  “Now, hey —” Her palms rose before her in a funny defensive gesture.

  “Just don’t say nothing. Just turn around and walk downstairs to the cellar. You won’t get hurt.”

  Her eyes moved helplessly all around the room as though she were listening for something. “Hey, listen … my husband …”

  “I know,” he smiled pityingly at her. “He’s due home any minute. Right?”

  He tucked the knife point up under her breastbone. “Go on,” he coaxed. “I won’t hurt you. I promise.”

  * * *

  He tied her with some laundry line she had down there and dragged her across the floor. There was a washing machine and a dryer off in a corner with a few baskets of fresh laundry waiting to be ironed. He grabbed a stocking off the top of one and stuffed it into her mouth; all the while she made this growling, gagging sound. She didn’t struggle at all. Then, with a sudden lurch, he dumped the rest of the basket of laundry
on top of her face, because he didn’t want to look into her eyes. Her legs and lower torso stuck out from beneath the scattered laundry. Her dress was hiked up above her thighs.

  He was quite heated up by then and knew that if he was going to do anything, he’d better do it fast or it would happen by itself of its own accord. That happened to him when he got excited. He’d just sort of lose control. This time it didn’t happen and he got to her fast. She never moved once. Not a muscle. Nor did she even make a sound. But all the time it was going on, he could feel her coiled tight as a spring, something inside her cold and trembling, like vibrations.

  When he’d finished, she just lay there, her legs splayed wide, never moving. He pulled all the laundry off her face, the sheets and pillowcases, a pair of ludicrous men’s pajamas with palm trees waving all about them. Underneath it all she was still there, eyes opened wide, part of the stocking spilling from her mouth with a clot of drool on it and blood at the corners where she’d bitten her tongue trying not to scream.

  When he took the knife out again, she fairly well knew what was up. Her eyes followed the knife, up and down, left and right, as though mesmerized by its dreamy motion. He bent over and put the point up against her throat, her eyes watching him all the time. She never once struggled or tried to stop him. For a moment he thought he saw something like pleading flicker in her eyes.

  She looked so silly there, disgusting, with her pants yanked down around her ankles, and the bloody stocking dangling like a tongue outside her mouth. And those big, flat, dumb eyes pleading.

  He punched the blade in hard and gave a sharp halftwist. She made a gagging sound like someone clearing her throat and started to squirm. He gave the blade a second twist and yanked sharp right. This time he must have severed an artery. A stream of blood squirted up about three inches under his hand and suddenly her throat opened and something white yawned from beneath it like a flower blooming. It was rather beautiful, he thought.

  When he finished he stood up, feeling a rush of dizziness, as though all the blood had emptied from his head. For a moment he thought he was going to black out. It was over in a minute and then he felt fine. Nearby was a shelf above a wash sink with a lot of paint cans and rags and brushes. He found a spray can of Red Devil, and on the wall right above her head he sprayed a large phallus and wrote beneath it the words I am the Monster of Chaos. Directly following that he scrawled the numbers, 2, 6, 14, 38, 52, 79. When he’d finished, he rinsed the blood from his gloved hands in the sink and went upstairs.

  FIVE

  “CAUSE OF DEATH, ACUTE HEMORRHAGIC pancreatitis …”

  “Cause of death, hypoglycaemic coma due to Islet-cell adenoma …”

  “… Girl, seventeen. Self-abortion by syringing. Vaginal exudations contain bacillus coli and staphylococcus. Post-mortem examination demonstrated peritonitis and septicemia due to perforation of the uterus. Cause of death …”

  Konig flicked irritably through the stack of recent protocols on his desk, his eye ranging from top to bottom, correcting here and there in red crayon the execrable grammar of his deputies, then moved quickly on as if he were seeking something in particular.

  From time to time a detail or a phrase or a combination of words would leap out at him from the page, slowing the fevered race of his eyes: “… track of bullet traveled right to left … downward inclination of roughly 5 degrees. Base of skull shattered. Gas present between dura mater and skull. Carotid arteries, Circle of Willis, and dural sinuses destroyed. Hind portions of brain detached from pons. No exit wound. No sign of natural disease. Cause of death …”

  “Specify point of bullet entry,” he scrawled in large red crayon letters along the margins. “Any bleeding at nostrils or ears?” He initialed his note, flinging the report aside to be returned to the pathologist who’d prepared it.

  His fingers raked hectically through his sparse hair until at last his eye lighted on the words he’d been seeking. “Unidentified female. Caucasian. Age 23-27. Cause of death, strangulation. Left great horn of thyroid cartilage broken. Cricoid cartilage shattered. Central anterior post displaced backward for a distance of about 0.1 inch. Considerable force exerted on front of neck by a broad, ridged, and firm object. A shod foot, probably a boot from evidence of heel marks about the face. Evidence of deep incisor marks in area of …”

  Even as he read, his lips moving rapidly over the words, he reached behind his desk and buzzed his secretary on the intercom. Instantly the buzz was returned. Without taking his eyes from the report before him, he lifted the phone. “Jonesy — would you ask Dr. Winger to come in here?”

  He banged the phone down and drummed the table with his fingers. It was a matter of minutes until she came, but in that time he’d reread the report and virtually committed it to memory.

  When the door opened he didn’t bother looking up, but continued to glance up and down the protocol as though it were the first time he was reading it. “About this one, the cricoid, hyoid rupture …”

  “Which one is that?”

  “You oughta know. You did the P.M.”

  “I’ve signed out on about twenty in the last two days.”

  “It’s the nameless lady.” Konig tried to contain his impatience. “The dark lady of the sonnets.”

  “Oh, her. The pretty one.”

  “If you like the type.” Konig looked up, his eyes settling on the young woman standing there before him. He didn’t know why he resented her and would have exploded at anyone who’d had the temerity to tell him it was simply the fact that she was a woman. Small, pert, somewhat boyish features, she looked to him as though she were scarcely out of high school. With her fair Nordic coloring and clean, regular features, she would have been attractive had she cared enough to do anything about it. But clearly she didn’t, and there was about her manner something intractable and sullen, as if in her mind she’d concluded there was very little she might expect from this man (possibly any man) but the worst.

  “You say here, ‘death by strangulation,’” Konig pursued the point.

  “That’s right. What about it?”

  “Well, for one thing, it’s different from these other Dancer jobs. Those were mostly throat slashings.”

  The young woman made a pained face. “With a few strangulations tossed in for good measure. If you’d seen the thyroid and cricoid cartilages …”

  “You said displaced, didn’t you?”

  “Backward. About one tenth of an inch. It’s in the protocol.”

  “I know. I saw it.”

  “Then why did you ask?”

  Konig frowned, disregarding the impertinence. “Any sexual stuff?”

  “There was some bruising on the external genitalia. Probably digital.”

  “Did you do swabs?”

  “Vaginal and rectal. No semen.”

  “Ah.” Konig sat back, clasping his hands above his ample paunch.

  The young woman was silent, observing him for a time. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Konig reflected a moment. “Odd, isn’t it? What does it mean to you?”

  “Incomplete coitus. Impotence. Could mean any of a half-dozen things. Maybe there just wasn’t any time for it. How am I supposed to know?”

  Konig removed his glasses and rubbed his eyes. “Have you thought any more about pediatrics?” he asked her. “Are we going to start that again?”

  “Or GYN. What’s wrong with GYN?”

  “Are you trying to say I’m a lousy pathologist?”

  “You’re okay.”

  “Then this must have something to do with the fact that I’m a woman.” She said it to him just as though she’d said it to him a thousand times and always in precisely the same manner.

  “You’re never going to get anyplace here.”

  “I could bring you up on charges for even suggesting that.”

  “I’d deny I’d ever said it.”

  “Anyone who’d ever worked with you would know damned well you said it. It fits you like a
glove.”

  “Pediatrics is where you belong.”

  “Spend the rest of my life pushing rubella vaccine and baby aspirin? Christ. You go into pediatrics. Look, I’m busy. Is there anything wrong with that report?”

  “Not at all,” Konig said, his voice hoarse and weary. His eyes studied the vivid pattern of blood spattered up and down her white surgical smock. “I’m only saying it would be more appropriate for a lady than spending her life in this goddamned abattoir.”

  “First of all, Doctor, don’t say lady. Say woman. And second of all, I like abattoirs. I’m at home in abattoirs. I find them exhilarating. I’m not a gynecologist. I’m not a pediatrician. Frankly, I loathe little folk.”

  “You must be abnormal. What woman doesn’t love kids?”

  “This woman.” Her voice was close to a shout. “So kindly have the decency to permit me to be my own abnormal self. At least, in this line of medicine I can’t hurt anyone.”

  Konig sighed and raised his hands like a man defeated. “I hate to see a good baby doctor go to waste.”

  The remark, for all of its typical condescension, astonished her. All she could manage by way of response was to stare at him and shake her head despairingly.

  He watched impassively the small, wiry frame as it marched toward the door. She moved stiffly erect, struggling to keep her shoulders back. “Oh, Winger,” he called somewhat tauntingly, “one other thing. On that new Torrelson job out in Douglaston. What about those bite marks?”

  “It’s all in the protocol, Doctor. We’ve seen those same bite marks before.”

  Konig’s face was full of the kind of strained forbearance he would never have sat still for at the hands of a male subaltern. “I’m aware we’ve seen bite marks before,” his voice croaked wearily. “What I’m asking is, did you take an impression of these?”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “You didn’t?” There was an edge to his voice that gave her pause.