by Jon F. Merz
“So you’re saying it’s better to not have them in your life?”
“They could always come back into it, like I said. They would just have to make an effort.”
“And what if you were the one who caused the pain? Would you make the effort? Would you apologize?”
“If I saw they were open to discussing it like mature adults. It always amazes me how many so-called grown-ups act like they’re still in high school. I mean, if you’re in your forties and fifties and you still treat disagreements like an excuse to cave all over people who don’t really deserve it, then have you even evolved past where you were when you had zits all over your face? I don’t think so.”
Lilith eyed me. “Sounds like you’re carrying some baggage there, Lawson.”
I shrugged. “My last CrossFit box grew to be a toxic place filled with little cliques of lazy people not interested in bettering themselves, just in tearing others down when they didn’t settle for mediocrity and a ‘good enough’ attitude.”
“And you paid the price because you didn’t subscribe to that way of thinking?”
“I left before it could get worse,” I said. “No sense sticking around when it was obvious the people you thought were your friends were anything but.”
Lilith nodded. “I’ve had that same thing happen to me. I don’t really like to talk about it much, but it still plagues me.”
“Is it tough reconciling it?” I asked. “You don’t strike me as wanting to settle for anything.”
“Sometimes, I don’t know what I want. On one hand, Manny gives me a comfortable life. It’s easy to be safe and without risk. I have a routine. I know exactly what I’ll be doing tomorrow and the next day and the next day after that. But is that what I was put on this planet to do? Or is there something else that I’m missing out on because I can’t bring myself to go for it? It’s easy to be content; it’s so much tougher to go for the gusto.”
“Plus, if you don’t have a support system that will be there for you, then it’s that much harder to convince yourself to do it in the first place.”
“Exactly. In some ways, we lock ourselves away in a prison of our own making. Like you were alluding to earlier. Hell and all.”
“Yeah. It’s a manmade thing. What we do to ourselves because we’re afraid of making a mistake or being seen as a failure. And then there are those people who claim to be supportive who only want you to get as successful as they are, but no more. Once you surpass them, they turn into vicious haters who dream about your downfall.” I shook my head. “It’s a tragic commentary on the state of our society that we don’t cheer on others’ success, but only their failures. We say we love heroes, but we don’t. We love watching people falter more. We love seeing them fail. It gives us a chance to say ‘I told you so,’ and confirms our own limited mentality: that we were right to stay where it’s safe and boring instead of going for something better albeit riskier.”
Lilith looked up as our food arrived. “Let’s change the subject to something we both can agree on is good: food.”
“No complaints from me there,” I said. My prime rib looked perfectly cooked, with a bright red center oozing plenty of au jus. The garlic mashed potatoes were delicious and not overly garlicky, which was a good thing in case Lilith suddenly decided she wanted to make out after dinner. I smirked to myself and she caught it.
“What’s so funny?”
“Nothing, I just crack myself sometimes is all.”
“Well, why don’t you share it?”
I leaned closer to her. In the dim lighting of the restaurant, her smile drew me in but her eyes held me fast. “I was thinking it’s a good thing the potatoes aren’t too strong.”
“In case I want to kiss you later?”
“Something like that.”
She smirked and pulled away. “Maybe I don’t want to kiss you at all, Lawson. Did you ever think of that?”
I took a bite of the prime rib. “Your choice. It’s always your choice.”
Lilith smiled. “Tell me why they call you Lawson.”
“Because it’s my name. Why do they call you Lilith?”
She leaned back and took a drink of water. “My name? It comes from the Hebrew. Did you know that?”
“No.”
She nodded. “In certain texts it means ‘night monster.’ Can you imagine? Other texts translate it as ‘screech owl.’” She shook her head. “Honestly.”
“Do you screech?” I asked.
“All women screech if the conditions justify it,” she said. “It’s the only way we can make ourselves heard sometimes.”
“And what are you like at night?” I asked. “Are you demure and sleepy or do you come alive and want to go cause mayhem?”
Lilith leaned closer to me and rubbed my arm. “It depends on who I’m with. Sometimes, I’d rather stay home and watch TV. But there are other times - when the company is just right - when all I want to do is go out and let myself go absolutely, completely wild. With no regrets, no repercussions, and no one telling me to behave myself.” She sighed. “But then I always wake up the next morning disgusted with my behavior. I usually act like an idiot and I think people are perpetually judging me.”
“You need to surround yourself with a bunch of different people then,” I said. “No sense being around those who try to contain your zest for life. Why would you?”
“Because they’re friends,” said Lilith.
I shook my head. “No. They’re not. They’re just in your life. Real friends want you to be happy no matter what. If they’re judging you or keeping you from being who you truly are, then at best they’re just people you sometimes hang around with.”
“And at worst?”
“At worst, they’re snakes in the grass waiting for the right moment to strike you down.”
20
When dinner was done, we walked outside into the cold night. Lilith leaned into me and shivered as a few snowflakes drifted down from overhead. “I could snuggle up in front of a fire and forget about the rest of the world.”
“And whatever would we do in front of that fire?” I asked.
“Whatever we wanted,” said Lilith. “No regrets, remember?”
I leaned into her some, trying to decide exactly what was going on here. In a way, I found myself definitely attracted to her. She was so far from what Talya was, that it drew me to her. I could sense a certain sadness in Lilith that I wanted to try to help. Over the years, I’ve often drawn to broken women I thought I could help. The question usually came down to whether or not they wanted the help or not. Most of the time, it was a no. They didn’t want to put the energy and work into reshaping their lives to be happier. It looked too hard so they conned themselves into settling for something boring instead because it was easy and routine and what they’d always known.
I made it to my car, suddenly aware of the fact that I didn’t want the night to end. Lilith stood in front of me with a smile on her face that as a cross between a come-hither look and I’m-going-to-toy-with-you-for-as-long-as-you-can-stand-it.
“This was fun,” I said.
She eyed me. “It was. Are you going to the box tomorrow?”
“Probably. If work doesn’t pull me away from it.”
“Forget about your work for one day,” she said. “It will still be there when you get back to it.”
I smiled. “It’s impossible for me to step away from my work. I’m what you might call irreplaceable.”
“Oh really?”
“Yeah. Really.”
She moved into my arms then, so smoothly that one moment she was standing six feet away and then next her body was pressing into mine. I felt her heat, felt her desire, and wanted to take her home with me. I looked down but she didn’t look up, instead she kept her arms wrapped around me in a hug.
“I’ll see you tomorrow then.”
She pulled away and walked toward her own car. I watched her for a moment and then shrugged. “All right then. Good night.”
I slid into my car, halfway expecting Lilith to come running back for a kiss. She didn’t. I shook my head, turned on the engine, then I pulled out and started driving home. As I drove, I replayed the last several hours over and over in my head. Lilith was clearly into me. I was clearly attracted to her. But she had a husband. That didn’t seem to stop her from flirting and certainly not from being very suggestive with her body language and innuendo. So what was the deal?
Did she and Manny have some sort of agreement whereby they could both go off and screw around if the desire to hit them? I wasn’t going to judge them harshly if they did. In a way, that was the arrangement that Talya and I had. And it made things a lot less complicated. We couldn’t be together all the time, so when the urges took over, go get them sated and them come on back. No problems and everyone is better off for it.
But did Lilith and Manny have that arrangement? Part of me thought no. Manny didn’t seem that evolved or enlightened, quite frankly. He was a clown. He’d grown ups a clown and would always be one. Except even as he tried to joke his way through the class earlier this evening, I could see that underneath the clown exterior, there was a vindictive streak. I caught the expression on his face when the coach had scolded him for being late. It was slight, but it was there. And I’d make sure I knew how to handle him if the time ever came when I needed to. He was used to being disrespected and underestimated; and that was when he would strike if he ever felt threatened enough. But if you knew how his brain operated, then it was easy enough to take advantage of it.
Lilith, though. She was something else. I’d never bought into astrology all that much, but I was curious as to what sort of behavioral characteristics an Aries woman might have that would help explain how she acted around me. From what I could see, she liked calling the shots. She didn’t like to be told what to do and didn’t like her freedom being crowded. Lilith was clearly very much her own woman. If she wanted to do something, she went ahead an did it, regardless of what Manny might say.
I wondered if that same sense of independence extended to other women her age. I’d seen enough examples of catty suburban moms who formed little cliques and established a pecking order for themselves. If they didn’t approve of something Lilith did, would they tell her she ought not to do it? And if they did, would Lilith agree to stop or did she have the courage to tell them all to fuck off?
One thing was for sure: Lilith was going to make going to the box a very interesting experience. Now it was just a matter of seeing how interesting things would get.
My phone rang then and I saw that it was Letourneau calling me. I checked the time: it was after nine o’clock. I opened the call and laughed as I said, “You’re pulling some hours today, huh?”
“Someone has to,” he said. “I thought I’d give you a call and see how things are going on your end.”
“Stalled. I took a drive down to Bob’s Gym to check out what I could find about Derek Cousins and his time at the place.”
“Anything?”
“Well, I had to fight my way through three of his MMA fighters to get to it, but yeah…not much.”
“Wait-what?”
“Bob wouldn’t give up the goods on Derek unless I sparred three of his fighters.”
“And you did?”
“Yeah.”
Letourneau paused. “And you’re not currently in the hospital?”
“No. Just enjoyed a very nice steak dinner.”
“Shit. Remind me never to piss you off.”
I wheeled the car onto the Turnpike. “Let me state for the record that fighting people to get information is not normally how I go about obtaining it.”
“Noted. So, what’d you find out?”
“Derek had a girlfriend there at the gym.”
“And?”
“She’s gone now. Moved on. Much the way the other event transpired.”
“You mean Amalfi.”
I frowned. So he knew for certain now that there had been a second death. I shouldn’t have been surprised; Letourneau wasn’t an idiot by any means. And he was good at his job, which meant he could have easily figured it out through a process of elimination. Or he could have simply bullied his way into the hotel, scared Templeton and gotten the information that way.
“Yeah, Amalfi. Turns out he had a side hustle at the gym he went to.”
“Same woman?”
“Possible, although the names aren’t similar.”
“Means nothing,” said Letourneau. “Could have been using Abraham Lincoln for all we know. What matters is we might have a pattern beginning to develop.”
“I’m not crazy about a pattern. It means there might be more victims in the future.”
“If there aren’t already. We might simply not have found them yet.”
“Way to be optimistic.”
Letourneau laughed. “I lost my sense of optimism years ago when I did a wellness check on someone and found a body that had been dead for a month, already starting to decompose, with a slashed open throat and rats eating away at the flesh.”
“Did I mention the lovely dinner I just had?”
“I had donuts,” said Letourneau. “So screw your steak dinner.”
“Fair enough. What about on your end? Any luck at the Luxe scene?”
“DNA matches to Cousins and Amalfi. That was it. From that perspective, it’s good news that we didn’t find anything else which might have indicated another victim, but from another perspective, it sucks because we got nothing on the killer.”
“What we’ve seen so far, we know she’s got to be a very careful customer.”
“Yeah. But there was some funky shit on the walls of the Luxe. You saw it.”
He didn’t even presume to ask, knowing that I would have noticed it. “Yep. I wasn’t sure if it was just smears or whether there was something more to it. I’ve seen something like that in the past, usually around voodoo ceremonies. Nothing like what was at the Luxe though.”
“I did some research,” said Letourneau. “Trying to track the symbols back to possibly explain what they actually were.”
“Find anything?”
“Nope. And I’ve been here for hours. I’m pretty sure I just reached the end of the Internet. And damn, what a scary place that is.”
“You should get some sleep.”
“My brain’s hardwired to try to figure this shit out. I don’t like murders like this. They disrupt my usual routine of gangbangers popping each other. I want closure on it so I can go back to my normal work day life.”
“Don’t lie. Part of you is excited about all of this crap.”
“Yeah, it’s why I became a cop in the first place. To find myself obsessing over crazy murders involving people’s guts being harvested for some bizarre ceremony.”
“Well, it couldn’t have been for the thrill of writing speeding tickets.”
“Don’t knock it. There’s definitely a bit of fun when you pull some asshole over for doing sixty in a thirty and you know he’s just the biggest douchebag around. Handing him that ticket feels like you’re part of some sort of universal justice. Seeing the expression on his face because he knows he got busted for doing something he can’t weasel his way out of is pretty awesome.”
“Wow. Remind me never to piss you off.”
Letourneau laughed again. “Anyway, enough about my thrill-seeking lifestyle. The real reason I called is to see if you wanted to go some place with me tomorrow.”
“You asking me out on a date?”
“No, asshole. I’m asking if you want to tag along when I bring a copy of those symbols to a friend of mine who works at the Institute of Archaic History.”
“Isn’t that a bit redundant?”
“What-asking you to come with me?”
“No, archaic and history.”
He sighed. “Look, I don’t know. It’s the name of the place. It’s over at MIT. Who the hell knows who came up with the name. But my friend is a big egghead on this stuff. If he
can’t tell us where those symbols come from then I doubt anyone can.”
I wasn’t so sure. If the symbols related to anything vampiric, then my best chances were with Wirek. Still, it wouldn’t hurt to tag along and see what the guy said, if for no other reason than to keep tabs on what Letourneau knew so I didn’t get surprised by any revelations he might be having.
“What time?”
“Morning. Say ten?”
“I could do that.”
“Good. I’ll text you the address. I’d offer to pick you up, but then you’d probably expect a full breakfast and shit. And I don’t make the big bucks like you CIA types.”
“You seen the GS scales lately? It’s appalling what they throw to us.”
“You could always come over to BPD. I think we’ve got a hiring bonus going on right now.”
“Yeah? What’s the bonus?”
“All the bad coffee you can drink.”
“Well, I don’t drink coffee so I guess I’m going to have to decline that amazing offer. Thanks anyway.”
“You don’t know what you’re missing,” said Letourneau. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
21
I dreamed about Lilith that night. Her eyes floated above me while I slept and then we were at the box doing back squats out of the rack. She asked me to watch her form and as she took the barbell out, walked back, and then squatted, I couldn’t help but marvel at how exquisite her ass was. When I mentioned this to her, she promptly brought the weight back up, reracked it, and then walked over and threw me down to the ground, her lips all over mine, our hands all over each other’s bodies. I tasted sweat; I smelled her scent; I explored every inch of her body while she did the same to me, until we were one writhing mass of undulating bodies on the floor, breathing and grunting and coming over and over again.
When I woke up, I needed a cold shower and a serious hit of juice to get my mind right. I’d overslept by nearly an hour. The last time that happened, I was still a teen ager. “Get it together, Lawson,” I told myself as I dragged a razor over my face, threw some aloe on afterwards, and then suited up for the drive into Cambridge where I’d meet Letourneau at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
