Dark Eye

by William Bernhardt

  Dark Eye

  William Bernhardt

  Susan Pulaski loves Las Vegas, she is the perfect fit for the city and for her job: unraveling the minds of deviant personalities- until a killer begins decorating Sin City with the horribly disfigured bodies of once beautiful young wom en. White- knuckling her way to the center of the case, Pulaski becomes the key player in a desperate hunt for a killer who believes he has found divine inspiration in the works of Edgar Allan Poe. But even with the assistance of Darcy O'Bannon, a twenty-five-year-old autistic savant astonishing skills, Pulaski is in more danger than she knows. Bernhardt is the author of "Primary Justice" and "Murder One".

  William Bernhardt

  Dark Eye

  The first book in the Susan Pulaski series, 2005

  FOR HARRY

  I am so proud of you.

  Book One. THE GROTESQUE

  And all my days are trances;

  And all my nightly dreams

  Are where thy dark eye glances…

  – “To One in Paradise ”

  EDGAR ALLAN POE

  1

  Three times I’ve fired my weapon. Three times. Twice because I had to. The third time was optional. But I never plugged anyone for making a pass at me, no matter how tempting it might be. It was a rule. Until that night in early October. When the whole damn mess began.

  I really don’t know how it happened. For starters, I looked like hell and I knew it, despite what the guy was saying. It was all bullshit.

  “Has anyone ever mentioned that you have a gorgeous pair of eyes?”

  “Only my ophthalmologist,” I told the kid in the Polo.

  “No, seriously, you do. My mom says I’ve always been an eye man.” He leaned closer. I could smell the whiskey on his breath. “Are they different?”

  “Different from… your mom’s?”

  “From each other. It’s like… your right eye is darker than the left.”

  I nodded. “Cat scratch. When I was five.”

  “Well, it works for you. Gives you an exotic aura.”

  “If you like that, wait till you see my athlete’s foot.”

  He smiled, which wasn’t his best look. “You know what? You’re funny.”

  “Not another reference to my appearance, I hope.”

  He scooted his chair closer to mine. “Look,” he said, his voice suddenly low and tremulous. “I think it’s obvious what’s happening here. Why don’t we cut through the baloney, go back to my place, and give each other what we both know we want?”

  “At the moment, there’s only two things I want.”

  “And they would be?”

  “Another bourbon. Neat.”

  “I can arrange that. What else do you want?”

  “You to leave.”

  The bar, Gordy’s, was a hellhole I’d discovered when I was working on a case. Mind you, Vegas has some beautiful neighborhoods. This just wasn’t one of them. Cops get called to some of the seediest parts of the city-actually, I think I’ve been to all of them. My specialty is the psychological profiling of deviant personalities. They call me a detective, but what I really do is provide detailed descriptions of creeps they haven’t been able to catch, which can be plenty challenging. I love it. Anyway, I tracked some low-life child molester here. Hated him but loved his bar. I bonded with it; I don’t know why. It wasn’t at all a Cheers thing. Barely anyone there knew my name, and I liked it that way.

  The décor was deadly. Tacky like the worst small-town plywood watering hole, except this was buried in Vegas’s old downtown. Noise thundered relentlessly, assaulting your eardrums, not just music but an endless stream of chatter-sports, politics, and lame come-on lines. The place stank, maybe because drunks kept leaving the men’s room door open, maybe because a wino on one of the bar stools kept vomiting on himself. Even the tables reeked, moldering wood soaked in way too much spilled hooch. There was a staleness to the air that made your head throb the second you stepped inside, that made cigarette smoke seem like a welcome alternative. And Gordy’s teemed with men of the worst sort-not the bikers, pimps, prostitutes, mobsters, gamblers, and bookies that gave Vegas its colorful reputation, although they were there in force, but preppy types from UNLV in starched golf shirts who knew they could treat anything with breasts like dirt and still get laid because they were so damned hot and hunky.

  Be it ever so humble.

  I wasn’t even thinking about work, so it came as a surprise when I saw Hikuru Mikimoto enter this two-bit saloon. He was a big-time drug dealer. And I hate drug dealers. I’d been consulting with some of the boys in Narc, trying to draft a profile that might help them find him. I really wanted to help, to prove that I could still do the job, but we’d been looking for more than three weeks without results. And then I just look up and there he is.

  I wasn’t entirely sure I was up to an arrest, but I couldn’t let a godsend like this slip through my fingers. I pushed to my feet, bumping the table over, and fumbled for my badge.

  “LVPD. Freeze, Mikimoto!”

  He was a middle-aged Asian man, his paunch masked by a black T-shirt and what looked to be an Armani sport coat. As soon as I spoke, he took a decisive step backward. And two men behind him surged forward.

  Personal goons. This was going to be more complicated than I had realized.

  They came on strong and quick. My only chance was to take them out before they could gang up on me. I pulled my gun and fired, but the shot went wide. It hit the mirror behind the bar and shattered it. The lounge lizards sitting at the bar scrambled. A second later, one of the goons knocked the gun out of my hand. I did a quick spin behind the table and a swing kick with my left leg, catching him full in the face. He dropped like a sandbag and didn’t get up. The other one lunged from behind and grabbed me around the throat. I bit down on his arm, and when he released his grip, I gave him an elbow to the solar plexus. He doubled over. I grabbed him by the ears and propelled him into the hardwood bar.

  Stupid fool didn’t know when to quit. He pulled himself together and came at me again. I whirled around at the last moment and used a move they’d taught me at the academy, a little Judo 101, to flip him over my shoulder. He flew forward and crashed into that splintered mirror. Big chunks of glass sprayed the room. All the patrons ducked for cover.

  Mikimoto tried to run away. Not likely. I dove for him, brought him down hard. By this time, the rest of the customers were racing for the doors, desperately trying to get out of my way. None of them offered to help.

  I straddled Mikimoto, pinning him facedown against the filthy glass-strewn floor. He was raging, babbling incoherently in some language I didn’t understand.

  “You’re under arrest,” I said, wishing to God I had a pair of cuffs. “You have the right to remain silent. If you choose to waive that right-”

  Mikimoto swung around with a speed that caught me by surprise. He had a small switchblade in his hand.

  Now that pissed me off.

  I twisted his arm at the socket, breaking it. The knife clattered to the floor. I wrenched his hand back, pinching it in the soft fleshy part between the thumb and forefinger. He screamed. With his slicked-back hair in my fist, I pounded his head against the floor.

  “Goddamn drug dealer,” I muttered. “Preying on kids. Pulling a knife on me.” I shoved his face down again, hard, and then repeated it, again and again and again.

  I felt someone pulling on my shoulders, trying to interfere. Another accomplice?

  No. It was Harry, the old guy who worked behind the bar.

  “Susan!” He’d been shouting, but for some reason it hadn’t registered until now. “Stop it! Stop it!”

  “Keep cool,” I said as I let Mikimoto’s limp head flop to the floor. “This creep’s the worst scum in Vegas. Pus
hes hard drugs to schoolchildren.”

  “Who the hell are you trying to kid?”

  I didn’t understand him, didn’t get it at all. But as I stared at Mikimoto’s face, it seemed to, I don’t know, sort of shimmer. Like a shape-shifter in a science fiction movie.

  “This is police work, Harry,” I growled, still staring at the face on the floor. “I’m doing my job.”

  “You’re drunk off your ass is what you are. Did you bloody that kid up just ’cause he was trying to make time with you?”

  I kept watching as the face changed, the whole body changed, and instead of a slick black T there was a pink Polo. How had the drug scum pulled this off? I wondered. Disguising himself as some preppy creep!

  I pushed up to my feet. All at once, I realized how wobbly I was. The room began to spin, so I sat down again. The problem with that was, my eyes went back to the face, that kid’s face, and I saw all the splattered blood and swollen flesh surrounding it. That finely chiseled face was like a pound of ground round.

  Strong hands rummaged under my coat, taking my flask, and I didn’t resist. “I told you to lay off the sauce an hour ago,” Harry said. “Didn’t know you had a private stash, damn you. How the hell am I going to explain this?”

  The room was still spinning, even though I was sitting. I felt like I might rip my stomach out with a dull knife if I could. Then I noticed that I was bleeding, too, that I was sitting in a pool of glass, and that there was an especially large shard right in front of me, and I recall thinking someone should do something about that because it could hurt someone, and then I grabbed it and jabbed it into my left wrist. Blood spewed everywhere.

  I fell over onto the floor, head first, and the rest of the world went away. After that, I don’t remember anything. I assumed I was dead.

  “Am I dead?” the young girl asked.

  He stared down at her, stretched out on the table before him, a luminescent tableau so full of innocence and youthful curiosity. Her lengthy stay in the basement, so far from the bright lights of the city, had caused her skin to etiolate, but rather than detracting from her natural splendor, it seemed to enhance it. The primordial was strong with her, he sensed. He had chosen well.

  “Of course you’re not dead, my darling. You can see, can’t you? Hear, smell, taste, and touch?”

  “I can’t move. Not at all. Nothing below my neck.”

  “I know.”

  “I think I’ve wet myself, but I’m not sure.”

  “You have.”

  “Even talking is hard.”

  He brushed a hand gently across her forehead, straightening her bangs. “I’m so sorry.”

  “And I’m scared. Really scared. You’re not going to hurt me, are you, mister?”

  He was short of stature, but he liked to think he had a certain presence just the same. Did his accent thicken as he spoke to the offering? He suspected that it did. The genteel Southern gentleman rose to the surface.

  He turned and gazed out the window, just above ground level. The sky was clear as glass; the air was pungently sweet. And oh, the stars-! The stars seemed to go on forever, traveling from his private retreat all the way to Dream-Land. Heaven was real here, far removed from the decay of the city, the fiberglass façades and organic stench. He did not look down but across, outward, into the desert, the vast untouched expanse, the low-lying Spring Mountains, feeling the arid warmth as it bathed and reassured him.

  “Mister?” Her voice was slow and stuporous.

  “Yes?”

  “Am I-am I-” Her hair was caught in her mouth. She tried to blow it away, but it was sticky and wet and wouldn’t go and there was nothing she could do. She was like a rag doll, unable to help herself.

  He reached down and brushed the hair out of her mouth. “Is that better, my dear?”

  “Yes. Thank you.”

  “And your question?”

  Her eyes were swollen and red from the anger phase. Screaming, shouting, threatening. Testing the waters, learning the abject futility of it all. Now she was more subdued, acquiescent. “Am I naked?”

  “Yes, love. You’re just as God made you.”

  “W-Why?”

  “Because I wanted to see you as you truly are.”

  “Did you… do anything to me? While I was out?”

  He pressed a hand against his black cotton vest. “What manner of monster do you take me for, madam?”

  “Well… I didn’t know.”

  “There has been no physical impropriety, I can assure you of that.”

  “Well… that’s… good, I guess. So… could I have my clothes back?”

  “I’m afraid not.” He reached down and brushed another strand of hair out of her mouth. He held it for a moment, staring at the root. “ ‘The life upon her yellow hair but not within her eyes…’ ” He looked at her with opprobrium. “You’re not a natural blonde.”

  “No.”

  “But your-your-” His face flushed.

  “Dyed that, too.”

  “Oh, my. Oh, my.” He assumed a stern expression. “My dear girl, this will never do. I mean, it simply isn’t done.”

  “All the girls at my high school were doing it.”

  “Then I shall see that you never return to that pubescent whorehouse.” He cleared his throat, fanning himself. “I couldn’t help but notice when I undressed you. You were wearing”-he bore a pained expression, as if the very words hurt him-“thong underwear. Do your parents know about this?”

  “No. A girlfriend bought them for me. Amber.”

  “I thought as much. Well, I destroyed the offending article.” He leaned in close and whispered, “There’s only one kind of girl who needs thong underwear, Helen. And you aren’t that kind.”

  She spoke hesitantly, her words still slurring occasionally. “You can’t know what kind of girl I am. You don’t know me.”

  “You’re wrong, my lovely. I’ve been watching you. When you slipped out.”

  “What?”

  “I’ve even been to your Web site. I know you’ve been unhappy. I know your mother doesn’t understand you. I know you were contemplating leaving home for good. You want something better than what you have been given, something richer. A Dream-Land.”

  The fear in her eyes was so intense he felt it in his heart as if it were his own. He had always been like that, sensitive to a fault, so in tune with the feelings of others that it sometimes became unbearable. He wished there were some way to turn it off, to flick the switch, to distance himself. But he had learned long ago that distance was not an option for him. He was a part of this world, and so he would remain. And if he could not escape the world, then his only recourse was to make it a better world.

  Staring down into her fearful eyes, golden locks encircling her face, it was impossible not to think of another girl, another innocent, from that lost time so long ago. Following him through the forest, splashing him at the beach, she was the best of him, too pure to be tainted and forever young.

  “Mister? Do you think if maybe I promised not to wear that underwear anymore, you could, um, let me go?”

  “But my sweet, we have so much work yet to do.” He returned to the basin and placed a washcloth in damp water. With great vigor, he began scrubbing her face.

  “Mister? You’re… you’re hurting me.”

  “It’s got to come off. All of it. A good girl doesn’t need paint to make herself attractive.”

  “But-you’re tearing-”

  “A little elbow grease. That’s what’s wanted here.” He made a small gasping noise. “Are those eyelashes false? Pity.” He ripped them off.

  “Oww! Mister, please-”

  “And the same goes for these earrings, I’m afraid. Imagine piercing your flesh so you can adorn yourself with colored glass. They’ve got to go.” He yanked them off through the lobe.

  The girl shrieked. “Please! Oh, my God, stop, please!”

  “Don’t fret. I’ll get something to stanch the bleeding.”

&nb
sp; The girl began to tremble helplessly.

  “And that leaves us with the problem of the hair. What to do about the hair?”

  “Maybe-I could just wear a wig?”

  He considered. “I fear that would only intensify the artificiality. No, there’s only one thing to be done.” In the cabinet beneath the basin, he found a battery-operated electric shear.

  “Please, don’t. Please.” She breathed heavily, twisting her head back and forth.

  “I don’t want to. But I have no choice.” He switched the clippers on. “Please don’t move.”

  He applied the shear to the crown of her head and moved over the crest in a long straight line, like a Marine barber buzz-cutting a new inductee. The girl let loose hopeless streams of tears that she couldn’t wipe away.

  In a matter of minutes, the cutting was done and the hair was gone. He took a brush and dustpan and cleaned up the girl and the table she rested upon. He retrieved his damp warm cloth from the basin and used it to gently, tenderly rinse her face and scalp.

  He ran the palm of his hand across the top of her head. “Smooth as a baby’s bottom. There now. That wasn’t so bad, was it?”

  “You-you cut off my hair,” she said, her voice loose and broken.

  “It was a necessary unpleasantness, but there’s an end to it. Now we can relax and wait until the moment of-” He stopped short. His mouth twitched. “You’ve painted your fingernails.”

  Her eyes were wide, pleading. “Everyone does it!”

  “No, not everyone.”

  “Please don’t hurt me anymore. I’m begging you.”

  He smiled reassuringly. “Fear not. You’ll barely feel it.”

  It was a simple procedure; they were artificial, press-on augmentations that left little dots of glue on the true nails after he tore them off. Then he pulled a chair to her side and rested. This process was more difficult than he had anticipated. He gazed out the window into the crepuscular sky, contemplating the outlines of the pretend palaces of the Strip, the headlights rushing from one nowhere to the next, hustling people about like the miserable ants they were. He was so fortunate to be here-sanctified, removed, anointed. So lucky.